The Amtrak amputation lawsuit went to the jury Thursday following an impassioned plea by Joe Nevis’ lawyer that jurors award him $57.6 million in damages for the Christmas Eve 2016 accident in which a train sliced off his legs.
“He has 40 more years to live, 40 more years of finding his way through doors, of people holding doors for him, holding elevators,” attorney Raymond McElfish told the Sacramento jury as he stood with Nevis next to him in a wheelchair in front of the jury box and U.S. District Judge Dale A. Drozd.
“They all know what they did, and they know what it’s worth,” McElfish said of the defendants — Amtrak, Marysville’s Rideout Memorial Hospital and Dr. Hector Lopez. “Compensate him so he can live his life the best he can do.”
McElfish, who originally wrote in court papers that he was seeking $32 million, said Nevis, 34, was the victim of a series of negligent acts by the hospital that let him wander out into the night after he was brought in as being too drunk for jail, and by the train engineer, who never saw Nevis later sprawled on the ground with his legs on the railroad tracks.
“Had he been treated correctly by this defendant, Dr. Lopez, not as an outcast, he would not have been there (on the tracks),” McElfish said. “These people didn’t do their job. These people violated their standard of care.
“Is Mr. Nevis responsible for some of this? Of course. Why not?”
But, McElfish insisted, Nevis would have never been on the tracks in Marysville if he had not been “prematurely discharged” from the hospital, and would not have lost his legs to the Coast Starlight passenger train if engineer Chris Edson had been watching the tracks ahead of the train that night.
“You’re operating a giant machine, you’ve got to look around,” McElfish said. “Why didn’t he see him and blow the horn? The question is, would it have worked?
“Well, you’ve got to do it first. It’s 100 decibels. It’ll wake somebody from a death sleep.”
Lawyers for the railroad, the hospital and Lopez all dispute those claims, and Amtrak attorney Jason Schaff placed the blame squarely on Nevis, who has said he has no memory of how he ended up on the tracks around 3 a.m. on Dec. 24, 2016.
“When a person chooses to trespass on private property in the middle of the night at 3 a.m. and chooses to lay their legs on active railroad tracks, they cannot blame the train for running them over,” Schaff told jurors.
He said Nevis has never taken responsibility for the incident, which was captured on a train video camera and played for jurors several times over the course of the three-week trial. In it, Nevis can be seen moving his legs up and down at the train approaches and continues on at about 30 mph without stopping.
He argued that Edson did not see Nevis, saying engineers cannot be looking at the tracks every minute because they had to watch the locomotive controls, check the train speed and consult safety paperwork during the 7½-hour train trip toward Oregon that night.
“You don’t need a Ph.D. to determine that you should see a 15-foot tall train with giant lights thousands of feet away,” he said. “It’s common sense.
“They weren’t told somebody was going to be lying on the tracks dressed in black behind a switchbox with his legs on the tracks. The crew was where they were supposed to be. Mr. Nevis was not.”
He added, “If you put yourself in front of a train, you get hit.”
Lawyers for Rideout and Lopez made their closing arguments Wednesday, saying Lopez checked Nevis’ medical condition extensively before determining he could be discharged, and that Nevis left the hospital — “eloped,” in hospital terms — without waiting for written discharge paperwork.
“This was not a cursory exam by any means,” said Rideout attorney Chad Couchot. “Mr. Nevis was well within his right to exercise his freedom to leave the hospital after he was medically cleared by Dr. Lopez.
“He was not kicked out, he was not bounced.”
Lopez attorney Brad Hinshaw said Lopez has seen thousands of intoxicated patients over his career and that Nevis was properly checked out before he left.
“There is an absence of any evidence when he was in the emergency room that he was impaired,” Hinshaw said. “We don’t know what happened to Mr. Nevis after he left the emergency room.”
McElfish contends that medical staff were negligent and violated policy by allowing Nevis to leave without his discharge paperwork, and that hospital staff should have alerted the security guard in the lobby or called police once they realized he had left.
He also said Nevis should have been given a blood alcohol content test at the hospital, which one expert testified could have come back at .229 BAC, nearly four times the legal driving limit.
The exact sequence of events that night remains unclear because Nevis says he can’t remember what happened after he went to cash his $800 paycheck.
Nevis had a history of drug and alcohol abuse that he has blamed on the death of his mother from a car crash, and had been living in a Yuba City rehabilitation center at the time of the train incident.
Schaff suggested that Nevis may have had a relapse that night.
“It was Christmas Eve,” he said. “It was going to be another Christmas without his mother.”
He also noted that Emily Hilbers, a surprise witness brought into court Wednesday, told jurors that she had heard Nevis say during a later car ride that he ended up on the tracks because he was attempting suicide.
Nevis and his sister, who was in the car during the ride, both denied that claim, and McElfish called the testimony a “stunt,” noting that none of the other defense lawyers brought that testimony up during their closing arguments.
“Everyone’s staying away from Ms. Hilbers now and this stunt,” he said. “It’s a stunt, and you know it’s a stunt when they won’t talk about it.”
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