DC Appellate Court Asks for Guidance in Case of Intoxicated Man’s Fall from Train Platform

The federal circuit appeals court for the District of Columbia (D.C.) has asked D.C’s highest court for guidance on the standard of negligence in a case involving a noticeably intoxicated man who died after falling from a train platform into a trough where his body was not found until four days later.

The question that the U.S. Court of Appeals, District of Columbia Circuit, wants the District of Columbia’s Court of Appeals to answer is whether Okiemute C. Whiteru became a trespasser when he fell in a station of the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (WMATA).

The appeals court concluded that whether Whiteru’s status—passenger or trespasser—in turn determines WMATA’s duty of care is an uncertain question of D.C. law for which there is no controlling precedent from the D.C. Court of Appeals. The circuit court thus certified the question to that high court.

The parents and the estate of Whiteru brought negligence and wrongful death claims against WMATA, alleging that WMATA breached its common carrier duty to render aid to Whiteru.

In an earlier ruling, the federal appeals court had ruled that Whiteru’s conceded contributory negligence due to his inebriation did not preclude common carrier liability for failure-to-aid a passenger.

Following that ruling, WMATA argued for the first time that the Whiterus could not recover because Whiteru became a trespasser when he fell backward from the platform over a retaining ledge he was apparently sitting on. If Whiteru was a trespasser, WMATA said it owed him only the duty to refrain from intentional, willful or wanton injurious conduct.

Moreover, absent the special relationship between common carrier and passenger, contributory negligence would again come into play, the transit agency argued.

A federal district court granted WMATA summary judgment, agreeing that Whiteru was a trespasser. The Whiterus thereafter took their case to the circuit appeals court.

The Whiterus’ medical experts testified that Whiteru remained conscious and would have been able to call for help for three to four hours after he fell. Whiteru’s ability to breathe gradually waned due to a damaged phrenic nerve, which damage was caused by a spinal fracture. He ultimately died from asphyxiation. His body was discovered four days later after a metro passenger brought it to the attention of the station manager.

WMATA’s operating procedure required the station manager on duty to perform visual inspections of the platform at various times. It is disputed whether the Judiciary Square station manager on duty that night in fact performed the inspections and whether the inspections included looking behind the ledge and into the trough.

Video surveillance footage captured Whiteru’s fall into the trough. It is undisputed that Whiteru would have survived if he had been timely discovered. It is also undisputed that Whiteru was a passenger while he was on the station platform. The question is whether Whiteru became a trespasser by falling backward into the trough, a non-public area.

The court noted that the federal district court has previously held that under D.C. tort law, “fare-paying customers in a subway station become trespassers when they leave the platform and enter the tracks.”

However, in the previous cases, the plaintiffs sought to recover for serious injury or death that resulted from having been struck by a train operating on the tracks after voluntarily entering the tracks. In none of the cases did the plaintiff seek to recover for the exacerbation of initial injuries caused by his involuntary entry onto the tracks; and none involved an area immediately adjacent to the portion of the station platform opposite the tracks.

The circuit court said that its reading of D.C. negligence precedent leads it to conclude that whether the plaintiff’s unauthorized and unprivileged entry was voluntary is immaterial to his legal status as a trespasser.

Also, the circuit panel continued, in none of the other cases did the plaintiffs’ injuries result from their entry onto the tracks but rather from their being struck by the train passing over them. In other words, the injury was separate and distinct from the trespass.

By contrast, no intervening cause separated Whiteru’s immediate injuries from his involuntary fall, which WMATA characterizes as a trespass. The issue is the transit agency’s failure to rescue him from the tracks. But a common carrier’s duty to aid attaches only if the plaintiff is a passenger.

Finally, the circuit court said it is skeptical that treating entry onto train tracks as trespass no matter the plaintiff’s state of mind applies to Whiteru’s fall. “D.C. precedent offers scant guidance in determining whether a plaintiff who involuntarily falls from a passenger area into an area not held open (except literally) to passengers remains a passenger or becomes a trespasser,” the court wrote.

The circuit court said it believes this case presents an issue of first impression regarding D.C. tort law: “Does the special relationship between common carrier and passenger survive a passenger’s involuntary backward fall from a station platform into a trough adjacent to the station platform (which trough passengers are not invited to enter) so that the common carrier is obliged to render aid provided it knows or has reason to know of his injury? Or does the fall from the station platform, no matter its involuntary character, sever the relationship and render the passenger a trespasser so that the common carrier owes him only the duty to refrain from intentional, willful or wanton injurious conduct?”

Faced with no case law on point, the court certified the following question to the D.C. Court of Appeals to define the boundary between trespasser and passenger status in this case:

Under District of Columbia law, and under the facts described, may a plaintiff who, as a passenger located on a common carrier’s station platform, involuntarily falls backward from the station platform into a non-public area immediately adjacent to the station platform, and from the impact of such fall sustains immobilizing injuries, recover for the exacerbation of those injuries attributable to the common carrier’s failure to aid him, if the common carrier knew or had reason to know of his injuries?