WileeCoyote
Eatibus Almost Anythingus
This is one thing that saddens me about my country of birth, in the US you can get away with suing for even the most ridiculous of things, even getting the living daylights beaten out of you by a bartender because you were breaking into his bar. What especially disgusts me is the time interval between when the accident happened and when the family sued Amtrak. Two years. Now, I must ask, why did they take so long? And if they're doing it so long after the accident initially happened, is it really to recompense the injuries this man sustained, or is it merely for financial gain?
A bit off topic for this thread, much less this forum as a whole, but this is not unlike the current situation concerning a certain airfield three kilometers away from me in Layenhof. The place was known as Finthen Army Airfield until 1992 when the US Army pulled out and handed the base back over to the German government, since then it's been used by a motley crew of pilots who fly on the weekends in small, single-engined prop planes. Not even two weeks ago a petition was circulated among the residents of the two closes communities to the airfield, Finthen and Wackernheim, to effectively shut down the place due to the supposedly intolerable noise levels produced by weekend fliers in Cessnas and Pipers. Lo and behold, two weeks and one thousand signatures later, the airfield has effectively been shut down for flight operations and can only be used in case a plane has to make an emergency landing. Let me note something here, the airfield has been host to weekend fliers for the past sixteen years, and now for what I find to be no plausibly good reason, the local populace rises up and demands the shutting down of this place. Ironic I find as the US Army pilots made far more noise than any amount of Cessnas could produce with their Chinooks and various other transports flying in and out on a daily basis. Why complain now when they've had sixteen years to do so?
I am doomed to living in a world where common sense is an endangered species, and I honestly expect that by the time I'm dead and buried it'll be as dead as I am. I tire of seeing these foolish attempts to cover up cases of undiluted stupidity, especially when such cases as this would've been laughed out of the courthouse a few decades ago.
WileeCoyote
A bit off topic for this thread, much less this forum as a whole, but this is not unlike the current situation concerning a certain airfield three kilometers away from me in Layenhof. The place was known as Finthen Army Airfield until 1992 when the US Army pulled out and handed the base back over to the German government, since then it's been used by a motley crew of pilots who fly on the weekends in small, single-engined prop planes. Not even two weeks ago a petition was circulated among the residents of the two closes communities to the airfield, Finthen and Wackernheim, to effectively shut down the place due to the supposedly intolerable noise levels produced by weekend fliers in Cessnas and Pipers. Lo and behold, two weeks and one thousand signatures later, the airfield has effectively been shut down for flight operations and can only be used in case a plane has to make an emergency landing. Let me note something here, the airfield has been host to weekend fliers for the past sixteen years, and now for what I find to be no plausibly good reason, the local populace rises up and demands the shutting down of this place. Ironic I find as the US Army pilots made far more noise than any amount of Cessnas could produce with their Chinooks and various other transports flying in and out on a daily basis. Why complain now when they've had sixteen years to do so?
I am doomed to living in a world where common sense is an endangered species, and I honestly expect that by the time I'm dead and buried it'll be as dead as I am. I tire of seeing these foolish attempts to cover up cases of undiluted stupidity, especially when such cases as this would've been laughed out of the courthouse a few decades ago.
WileeCoyote
lol.... Good Lord, whatever happened to the old days? LOL ..... I feel queezy 
. Good Luck to Amtrak, and the family, even though its kinda foolish...
Claude