Death of man struck by train leads to 'bizarre' civil case
By Steve Schmadeke, Chicago Tribune reporter
December 29, 2011

Ruling in what it called a "tragically bizarre" case, an appeals court found that the estate of a man killed by a train while crossing the Edgebrook Metra station tracks can be held liable after a part of his body sent airborne by the collision struck and injured a bystander.

In 2008, Hiroyuki Joho, 18, was hurrying in pouring rain with an umbrella over his head, trying to catch an inbound Metra train due to arrive in about five minutes when he was struck by a southbound Amtrak train traveling more than 70 mph.

A large portion of his body was thrown about 100 feet on to the southbound platform, where it struck Gayane Zokhrabov, then 58, who was waiting to catch the 8:17 a.m. train to work. She was knocked to the ground, her leg and wrist broken and her shoulder injured.

A Cook County judge dismissed Zokhrabov's lawsuit against Joho's estate, finding that Joho could not have anticipated Zokhrabov's injuries.

A state appeals court, after noting that the case law involving "flying bodies" is sparse, has disagreed, ruling that "it was reasonably foreseeable" that the high-speed train would kill Joho and fling his body down the tracks toward a platform where people were waiting.

Leslie Rosen, who handled Zokhrabov's appeal, said that while the circumstances of the case were "very peculiar and gory and creepy," it ultimately was a straightforward negligence case, no different than if a train passenger had been injured after the engineer hit the brakes.

"If you do something as stupid as this guy did, you have to be responsible for what comes from it," she said.

Joho's mother, Jeung-Hee Park, who had just dropped him off before the accident, filed her own lawsuit against Metra and the Canadian Pacific Railway. The lawsuit said both entities were negligent because Joho had no warning that what he thought was his Metra train was actually an express Amtrak train.

The Metra train was delayed that day, but there was no announcement on the platform's loudspeakers. A Cook County judge found that the railroads had no duty to warn about such an "open and obvious danger" as a moving train, a decision upheld on appeal.

Keith Davidson, one of Park's attorneys, said he is seeking to appeal that ruling to the Illinois Supreme Court.

Two months after Joho's death, another person was killed while crossing the Edgebrook station tracks in Chicago. Joyce Chiriboga, 48, died after being struck while following her sister across the tracks in a case that alleged a Metra engineer had failed to keep lookout and blow the horn in time.

The case was recently settled for an undisclosed amount, court records show.

Other Illinois "flying body" cases include a 1974 Supreme Court ruling from La Grange in which a passenger in a two-car crash at Brainard Street and Ogden Avenue was thrown 30 feet into a public parkway. His leg, which had to be amputated, was impaled on a broken piece of drain pipe the town had left by the road, but courts found that La Grange could not be held liable.

In 1951, a postal worker in Momence, Ill., was seriously injured after a train struck an elderly woman whose body knocked him into his mail cart, breaking his leg. But in that case, he successfully sued the railroad for operating a train at an unsafe speed.

Completely ridiculous. When someone commits suicide, they tend not to think what'll happen to others, except maybe their loved ones. Maybe he thought he'd get squashed under the train?

ruling that "it was reasonably foreseeable" that the high-speed train would kill Joho and fling his body down the tracks toward a platform where people were waiting.

A Cook County judge found that the railroads had no duty to warn about such an "open and obvious danger" as a moving train, a decision upheld on appeal. . .

Two months after Joho's death, another person was killed while crossing . . . alleged a Metra engineer had failed to keep lookout and blow the horn in time.

Anyone who uses the train regularly in the UK will be familiar with the following words:

"Warning - stand clear of the platform edge. The train approaching platform four does not stop here"