A Philadelphia man filed suit late last month in state court over injuries he allegedly
sustained after coming into contact with a raised and uneven sidewalk outside of 30th Street Station.
Robert Wilson, who resides in the city’s Germantown section, claims he suffered injuries to his shoulder, wrist, back, knees and neck, including various disc herniations, as a result of falling on defective concrete while he was a patron of the train station in downtown Philadelphia back on Oct. 3, 2011.
Wilson is suing Amtrak, the City of Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation, and Buckley & Company Inc., a Philadelphia-based construction company doing exterior work on the property.
The four defendants are accused of negligence for allowing a dangerous and defective condition to exist at the location, failing to correct the dangerous condition, failing to provide and maintain an unobstructed and safe route of travel for plaintiff and other train station patrons and passersby, and failing to barricade or otherwise contain the area where the dangerous condition existed.
Wilson claims the incident has caused him to expend various sums of money on medical treatment.
He also asserts that he has suffered physical pain, mental anguish and humiliation, and that he may continue to suffer the same into the future.
Wilson, who is being represented by attorney Bruce Martin Ginsburg, of Philadelphia’s Ginsburg & Associates, is seeking more than $50,000 in compensatory damages, which is the jurisdictional limit at Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, where the suit was originally filed on July 24.
This week, lawyers representing Amtrak filed a removal notice at the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania seeking to have a federal judge take over the case.
Amtrak attorney Yuri J. Brunetti, of the firm Landman Corsi Ballaine & Ford, argued in the Aug. 13 filing that the U.S. District Court is the appropriate venue in which to litigate the case because Amtrak is an agency of the federal government.
The City of Philadelphia has already consented to Amtrak’s removing the case out of Common Pleas Court, the removal notice states.
Neither PennDOT’s nor Buckley & Company’s consent is required in the case because they apparently have not yet been served with the complaint, Brunetti wrote.
The federal case number is 2:13-cv-04709-TON.
Phila. man sues Amtrak, PennDOT, others over slip-and-fall at 30th Street Station
