EvilCorporations.com • Iowa Supreme Court No. 22–0587 • 22 min read

A Rail Exploded. A Man Lost His Hand. BNSF Paid $6.2 Million and Then Tried to Wipe Out the Verdict.

The Non-Financial Ledger: What a Verdict Form Cannot Capture

Scott Olson was not operating a machine from a safe distance on July 31, 2017. He was a section foreman standing on a railroad bridge in Iowa, physically cutting through a defective length of steel rail with his crew. The work required his body to be close to the rail. A harness restricted his movement. He could not cut all the way through the section himself because of the access constraints his position created. A coworker across from him tried to finish the cut and left a small burr of metal in the rail.

Olson then did what foremen do: he used a sledgehammer to break the burr loose. He attached rail tongs from a boom truck to the rail so a crane could lift it off the bridge. The boom operator, working a remote control away from the truck, could not lift the section. The rail had become wedged. The boom’s torque caused an overload function to kick in, which shut off the boom. The pressure on the rail did not release. It built. The boom operator walked toward the truck to hit an override button. And then the rail exploded.

That is not a metaphor. The court record states clearly: “the rail suddenly exploded under the pressure, flew several feet into the air, and hit Olson (who was still standing near the rail) on its way down, slicing through his left hand and severely fracturing his left leg.” A piece of steel rail became a projectile and tore through a man’s body.

The legal proceedings that followed consumed over four years of Olson’s life. He filed his complaint, survived the discovery process, sat through a nine-day jury trial beginning August 30, 2021, watched a jury return a verdict fully in his favor on September 8, and then watched BNSF immediately file a motion for a new trial on September 23, the same day the district court entered judgment. The company that maimed him was not finished fighting him.

The Iowa Court of Appeals sided with BNSF and ordered the entire case retried. To understand what that means for a working person: it means years more of litigation, more depositions, more attorneys arguing over procedural rules in rooms Olson does not control, while the company responsible for his injuries continued to operate, continued to generate revenue, and continued to assert that the entire verdict against them was built on a technicality.

The Iowa Supreme Court ultimately gave Olson his verdict back. But the law cannot restore the years that a corporation’s legal department can spend making an injured worker prove, again and again, what a jury already decided once.

Legal Receipts: What the Record Actually Shows

The following quotes are drawn directly from the Iowa Supreme Court opinion in Olson v. BNSF Railway Company, No. 22–0587, filed December 22, 2023. These are not summaries or paraphrases.

“The rail suddenly exploded under the pressure, flew several feet into the air, and hit Olson (who was still standing near the rail) on its way down, slicing through his left hand and severely fracturing his left leg.”

• This is the court’s factual description of the accident. It is not contested. BNSF’s own legal position acknowledged these injuries occurred. The dispute was entirely about how much of the blame BNSF should bear, not whether the event happened.
• The phrase “exploded under the pressure” is the court’s language, not an editorial choice. The rail was pressurized by the boom’s torque and failed catastrophically while a worker was standing next to it.

“BNSF did not dispute that the incident caused Olson’s injuries, but it sought to reduce its own liability by asserting that Olson was responsible, in large part, for his own injuries based on using the sledgehammer and failing to keep out of the way.”

• BNSF’s defense strategy was to argue that the man who was hit by an exploding rail should have moved faster. The sledgehammer he used to break a small metal burr, as part of his job, was framed as an act of negligence on his part.
• The jury rejected this argument entirely and assigned 100% of fault to BNSF. Zero percent was assigned to Olson.

“BNSF’s counsel noted that the verdict form was based on fault, and since ‘[f]ault is being set out here as the combination of negligence and cause, . . . we have to use that terminology in order to get to the verdict form.'”

• This is BNSF’s own attorney, during the pretrial jury instruction conference, explaining that he understood the verdict form combined negligence and causation into a single “fault” question. This demolishes BNSF’s later claim that the form was confusing or legally defective.
• The Supreme Court relied on this statement as direct evidence that BNSF understood the form and had no legitimate grounds to challenge it after the verdict was returned.

“He explicitly told the jury: ‘when you get to the verdict form, you’ll find that if you answer “no” to was BNSF at fault — and “fault” means they were negligent and it was a cause — had to be a cause of the accident — if you answered no, you don’t have to answer any of the other questions.'”

• This is BNSF’s own attorney during closing arguments, explicitly defining the verdict form’s “fault” question for the jury in exactly the way BNSF later claimed was an error. They explained the form correctly to the jury and then told a court of appeals it was wrong.
• The Supreme Court’s conclusion was direct: BNSF “engaged in an extensive jury instruction conference with the district court and opposing counsel and failed to object to combining negligence and fault into a single question on the verdict form. Its complaint in the motion for a new trial came too late.”

“Error preservation is important for several reasons: (1) it affords the district court an opportunity to avoid or correct error that may affect the future course of the trial; (2) it provides the appellate court with an adequate record for review; and (3) it disallows sandbagging—that is, it does not ‘allow a party to choose to remain silent in the trial court in the face of error, tak[e] a chance on a favorable outcome, and subsequently assert error on appeal if the outcome in the trial court is unfavorable.'”

• The court named BNSF’s strategy directly: sandbagging. The legal term for staying quiet about an alleged problem during trial, hoping to win anyway, and then raising the problem only after losing. This is what BNSF did with the verdict form.
• The Supreme Court ruled that BNSF’s failure to object before the jury received the case meant the objection was legally dead and could not revive itself through a post-verdict motion.

Societal Impact Mapping: Who Pays When Railroads Aren’t Held Accountable

Public Health and Worker Safety

The Olson case reveals how physical danger is distributed on railroad worksites and how inadequate training amplifies that danger for every worker present.

• BNSF’s negligent training of the boom operator was identified as a central cause of the accident. A boom operator who does not understand how to safely manage a pressurized, wedged rail becomes a danger to every crew member within range of a failure event.
• The complaint specifically alleged that BNSF “failed to reasonably train, educate, and instruct its officers, agents, and employees in reasonable rules, customs, practices, policies, and procedures to prohibit and protect employees against the foregoing acts and omissions.” This was not a one-person failure. It was a systemic training gap across a crew.
• The concept of a “circle of danger” was a disputed issue at trial: whether employees understood the risk zone around the boom and rail. That this was a matter of confusion, rather than established protocol, indicates workers were placed in hazardous positions without consistent safety guidance.
• Under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act, railroad workers cannot claim workers’ compensation in the traditional sense. They must sue their employers in court to recover damages. This means every injured railroad worker faces years of litigation to get what most workers receive through an administrative process. The Olson case lasted at minimum six years from accident to final verdict.

Economic Inequality

The Olson case is a textbook example of how corporate legal resources function as a second verdict system, one that only the corporation has the budget to operate.

• BNSF filed a motion for a new trial the same day the district court entered judgment. The speed of this response signals a pre-prepared legal strategy, not a good-faith review of the verdict. This is standard practice for large corporations: file immediately, force the plaintiff into a second round of proceedings, and increase the cost of winning.
• BNSF employed multiple law firms across multiple states: Lamson Dugan and Murray LLP in Omaha, and Haws-KM P.A. in St. Paul. Olson’s team included attorneys from Kansas City, West Des Moines, and Minneapolis. The cost of this multi-state legal war is not symmetrical. BNSF is a subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, one of the largest holding companies in the world.
• The Iowa Court of Appeals sided with BNSF, ordering a new trial. Had the Iowa Supreme Court not granted Olson’s application for further review, Olson would have faced retrying his entire case, at his attorneys’ expense, from scratch. For a seriously injured worker with limited income, the prospect of years more litigation is itself a tool of settlement pressure.
• The Federal Employers’ Liability Act was designed specifically to protect railroad workers from employer negligence. BNSF’s legal strategy was to use state procedural rules, specifically error preservation standards, to nullify a federal workers’ protection law. The Iowa Supreme Court blocked that move, but only because Olson’s team successfully appealed a reversal at the intermediate court level.

The “Cost of a Life” Metric

What Now: Accountability Doesn’t Stop With One Verdict

Olson’s victory is final. But the conditions that put him on that bridge, undertrained colleagues and all, remain in place at BNSF and at railroads across the country. Here is where pressure belongs.

The People Running This

• BNSF Railway Company leadership: [REDACTED – Executive names not in source document]. The company is a wholly owned subsidiary of Berkshire Hathaway, whose leadership bears ultimate accountability for subsidiary safety culture and legal strategy decisions.
• The Iowa District Court for Polk County, Judge Samantha Gronewald, presided over the original trial and correctly denied BNSF’s motion for a new trial. Her judgment was affirmed by the Supreme Court.
• The Iowa Court of Appeals, whose reversal was vacated by the Supreme Court: the judges who authored that reversal are a matter of public record in Iowa court filings.

Watchlist: Regulatory Bodies With Authority Here

• Federal Railroad Administration (FRA): The federal agency responsible for railroad safety regulations, including worker safety standards, equipment certification, and training requirements. The inadequate boom operator training at the center of this case falls directly within FRA oversight jurisdiction.
• Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA): Has concurrent jurisdiction over certain railroad worker safety conditions. The “circle of danger” protocols and site safety communication failures documented in this case are the kind of systemic issues OSHA workplace inspections are designed to catch.
• National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB): While primarily focused on accident investigation, NTSB recommendations on railroad worker safety carry significant weight and can trigger regulatory reform when companies repeatedly fail their workers.
• U.S. Department of Labor: Oversees FELA compliance and broader railroad worker protection. BNSF’s strategy of attacking a worker’s verdict through procedural appeals is a pattern worth tracking across the department’s labor enforcement data.

Resistance: What You Can Do

• Railroad Worker Unions: BNSF employees are represented by multiple rail unions including the Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers and Trainmen (BLET) and the International Association of Sheet Metal, Air, Rail and Transportation Workers (SMART-TD). Contact your local union leadership to report unsafe training practices or pressure zone violations. Unions have legal standing to demand safety audits.
• FELA Attorneys: If you are a railroad worker who has been injured and your employer is pressuring you toward a quick settlement, know that the FELA gives you the right to a jury trial. Organizations like the Railroad Workers United network can help connect you with legal resources.
• File FRA Safety Complaints: Railroad workers and members of the public can file safety complaints directly with the Federal Railroad Administration at safety.fra.dot.gov. Documented patterns of inadequate training and crew coordination failures force regulatory review.
• Track BNSF Safety Violations: The FRA publishes a public database of railroad safety inspections and violations. Cross-referencing BNSF’s inspection record against the training failures documented in this case gives you concrete data to share with your elected representatives and local media.
• Mutual Aid for Injured Workers: If someone in your community has been injured in a railroad or industrial workplace accident and is facing a protracted legal fight, connect them with local legal aid organizations and labor solidarity groups. The financial attrition of multi-year litigation is itself a corporate weapon. Counter it with community support.