A lot of people get hurt as a result of Septa failing to repair their trolley tracks. In fact, when Septa receives a claim for injuries as a result of the poor condition of their trolley tracks, their first move is to deny the claim and try and blame the city, county, or state where the tracks are. After all, a lot of Septa’s trolley tracks are laid on someone else’s property, like in the City of Philadelphia.
However, the law says that Septa is responsible for between the trolley tracks and 18 inches on either side of the tracks. That is why it is important to get really good pictures of where the person got hurt and failing to do so may result in losing your case.
Even when you show Septa that they the person got hurt on their tracks, they often deny the claim with another technicality. They say that the law requires that they have advance WRITTEN notice of the defective condition. Septa interprets this as meaning you must prove they got a letter from someone this specifically tells them about their defective trolley tracks. They figure you are never going to be able to prove that since they don’t keep the records.
SEPTA Doesn't Keep Records of Defective Tracks
To get around that, you must file suit and start pressuring them for the records. In addition, you must get records from any other organization that might have put them on notice.
Philadelphia SEPTA Injury Attorney Wins
I represented a young woman who was a passenger on a moped. She was seriously injured after the moped flipped after hitting a large hole between some Septa trolley tracks in North Philadelphia. The tracks were a mess and hadn’t been repaired in years. We had great pictures. Septa still would not settle and insisted they never received any WRITTEN notice about the condition of the tracks. What a surprise? I knew that was a lot of bull. The case went to trial. During my investigation, I found an inspector for the City of Philadelphia Streets Department. He told me he knew about those bad trolley tracks and had been trying to get Septa to do to fix them for a long time. Septa did not care what the inspector said. They thought he probably did not keep any written records. They were wrong. I met the inspector at 5 o’clock in the morning on the 3rd day of trial at a warehouse in North Philadelphia. He dug out the original notice to Septa and 2 follow up notices. He came to court and testified that it was his custom to keep the original notices in his file and to hand-deliver a duplicate to Septa. And that he had done that on 3 separate occasions. I sensed that the jury was angry at Septa. Septa knew it as well and tried to settle the case for $100,000. I told the client not to take it. Two days later, the jury came back with a verdict for my client for $1,500,000.