10th Circuit Affirms Record $1.8 Million Judgment to Terminated BNSF Inspector for Illegal Retaliation [Updated]

December 17, 2021, last updated November 10, 2022

The United States District Court of Colorado today awarded Plaintiff Brandon Fresquez $696,173 for lost wages. The award comes 8 months after a jury determined that BNSF illegally terminated Fresquez for reporting the railroad’s practice of leaving defective tracks in service and refusing to falsify reports to cover up the practice. The jury’s verdict was accompanied by an award of $1.05 million in punitive and emotional distress damages. The combined $1.76 million award is the largest amount ever awarded to a plaintiff suing for illegal retaliation in violation of the Federal Rail Safety Act (FRSA).

The FRSA requires that when railroad carriers spot a defect on a section of track, they must repair the defect within 30 days or remove the track section from service. This requirement often puts track inspectors at odds with the roadmasters they work under, said Nick Thompson of Casey Jones Law LLC, who represented Fresquez as lead trial counsel. Railroad safety employees are often caught “between a rock and a hard place where they want to follow the law but don’t want to slow down trains and catch the wrath of their supervisors,” Thompson said.

Update: After BNSF appealed, the Tenth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the jury’s findings and their damages award. In doing so, it concluded that the jury could have reasonably found that BNSF “created and promoted a workplace culture that encouraged the flouting of federal safety regulations, and openly discouraged employees, by way of intimidation and fear of reprisal, from objecting to these practices, all for the purpose of allowing trains to continue to run on tracks that contained defects.”

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If you believe you have suffered adverse employment action such as termination or demotion in retaliation for reporting a safety violation or refusing to engage in unsafe railroad practices, contact us for a free consultation regarding whether you may be entitled to compensation for your employer’s violations of the FRSA.