La. Court Denies Motion for Summary Judgment, Says LIA Doesn’t Eliminate Employer’s Duty to Ensure Safe Workplace

SHREVEPORT, La. –– A Louisiana federal court has declined to expand the reach of the Locomotive Inspection Act in a way that would “completely remove a railroad worker’s ability to recover for asbestos exposure arising from work on locomotives and locomotive parts,” concluding that the LIA did not extinguish the employer’s duty to guarantee the plaintiff a reasonably safe workplace.

In the Nov. 10 opinion, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana concluded that the railroad employer “was in the best position to publish warnings in the workplace about the presence of asbestos and protect Plaintiff from …