Apparently, the legal theory is that there is more than one guilty party. I would say that the lawyers and their clients are just taking advantage of what the law offers. That is human nature. In the end, it is up to the jury to apply the law. If there is a problem with this, the law needs to be changed.

The theory in this case is "go after the deep pockets".

WSAV, the NBC Affiliate in Savannah covered each day of the trial. Here are links to their articles:

(1) Jury selected in ‘Midnight Rider’ civil suit against CSX (Published: July 10, 2017, 7:18 pm)

(2) RECAP: Day one of civil trial against CSX Transportation in ‘Midnight Rider’ case (Published: July 11, 2017, 11:55 pm)

(3) Day two of civil trial against CSX railroad corp. in ‘Midnight Rider’ death (Published: July 12, 2017, 10:02 pm)

(4) Parents and train engineer testify in civil trial against CSX in ‘Midnight Rider’ death (July 13, 2017, 6:51 pm)

(5) Location manager of ‘Midnight Rider’ testifies in civil trial against CSX railroad (July 14, 2017, 5:37 pm)

The last article concludes with:

The Atlanta newspaper has an article summarizing the trial's outcome:
Jury awards $11.2 million after fatal injury on Georgia film set

An excerpt:

I would bet that CSX will seek to overturn the award largely because they had no real hand in the accident other than doing what they do (hauling freight). Not surprised that the jury agreed to penalize CSX but honestly what did the company do wrong? The fault was with the director and the production company.

Again, this is the kind of outcome that the class 1 risk management people use to urge their companies to stay far away from passenger excursions ( especially steam) as the "attractive nuisance" factor may cause someone to get hurt or worse.

Vey fortunate we got our nation built before the lawyers and bean counters took over.

IMHO-Ross Rowland

The railroad was only assigned 35% of the fault, so their part of the total damages is what was mentioned above. Whether or not to appeal is pretty much a business decision. How much has it cost to defend the case to this point, how much will it cost to appeal and what is the chance of a successful outcome on appeal? Large corporations look at this much differently than an individual might. I would not be surprised to see CSX appeal and I wouldn't be surprised to see CSX cut a check and walk away from the matter. I wouldn't bet on either, though. This is a decision that the Law Department will pass on to corporate management to make the decision.

Oh, for cripes sake the film crew watched two OTHER trains go by on the bridge and still thought it was OK....... Honestly how much stupidity can there be in one group of adults ????

TWO TRAINS WENT BY WHILE THEY WERE THERE AND THEY STILL WENT ON THE TRACKS....... Unbelievable.

As a CSX shareholder I want them to appeal this immediately. CSX owns the tracks and said "we cannot support your request to be on our property" and someone argued that they did not explicitly say "NO", so CSX is at fault..... "cannot support your request to trespass on our property" EQUALS NO.....

It seems that the prior train crews saw folks along the track on the other companies property how where those train crews supposed to know those folks were going to go on the bridge ? CSX needs better lawyers.

I feel badly for the poor engineer, the lawyers would have found fault with anything he did, if He put it in emergency and the train piled up into the bridge and killed a dozen folks they would have claimed he should have braked more slowly.

This is where a well meaning policy can be used against you. The issue that the attorneys raised was the failure of the CSX crews to follow company policy to report the trespassers to the dispatcher. The argument is essentially that the CSX crews failure to report the trespassers to the dispatcher was a failure of the railroad to exercise due care in the operation of its trains. Had the dispatcher known that trespassers were on the right of way, the dispatcher would then have had a duty to pass that information on to the crew that was involved in the incident. That said, from a business standpoint it probably would have been cheaper for CSX to have settled and not gone to trial. Going to trial gets expensive real quick and even if you win, you might not get anything tangible out of it. Getting a judgment is one thing, enforcing it is something else.

Appealing is another matter entirely-you don't appeal a decision simply because you don't like the outcome. You only appeal when you believe that a reversible error was made by the trial court. If the attorneys decide that they are not likely to be able to prove reversible error, there's no point in appealing. In appeals, you're dealing with brass tacks-the appeals court will only examine the legal issues, not the evidence of the trial case.

Blaming CSX seems to defy common sense because we expect blame to be assessed only to the most blameworthy, and it obviously the one who failed to get permission from CSX and ignored their denial seems to be at the top of the blame chain. But CSX set themselves up for sharing the blame by their instituting a policy that says a trespasser amounts to a railroad emergency and must be reported immediately to the dispatcher, and that they will slow trains down if necessary to avoid injuring the trespasser.

Also, I believe the law imposes various requirements for a landowner to protect a trespasser from injury. It does not automatically regard the loss of the trespasser’s life as just compensation for wronging the landowner by trespassing.

It is not hard to understand why the large number of people in the film crew watched two trains go by and then went out onto the bridge to do their filming. They were led to believe that their company had permission, and were told that two trains would pass, and then they could start filming. Although I don’t understand why they staged a lookout to watch for trains if they believed they had permission. It would be interesting to hear how they looked at that matter. Did they stage lookouts in both directions from the bridge?

I have had a lot of difficulty understanding details of this trial as reported in the news. All the facts are woven together in a hodgepodge of delivery that makes it very difficult to isolate and evaluate one single line of action.

There has been a news story saying that when the first two trains passed, the film crew was waiting on Rayonier property, and had not yet entered CSX property. If this is true, it seems to totally defeat the legal theory for blaming CSX because if the crew were not yet on CSX property as the two trains passed, there would have been no trespassing for those train crews to report. So I conclude that this story is a misstatement of the facts that seems to have originated in the very first days after this accident, and persisted ever since. There is a lot of detailed coverage over the last couple weeks that clearly describes testimony about the film crew standing on CSX property right next to the track as train #1 and #2 went by.

At this point, what I would really like to hear is the detailed explanation of the legal theory as to why CSX’s failure to follow their own rules on reporting trespassers proves their negligence. All we have been told is that it does prove their negligence, but CSX repeatedly said it does not prove that. So I would like a deep explanation of this matter just in terms of the applicable law.

Alan Walker, I do understand your points completely, and I get it, but for cripes sake is a railroad supposed to stop all operations just because anybody is anywhere near their private property ???

My Father was involved in a "trespasser injured on RR property" lawsuit, some idjit was standing on RR property looking at birds with a telescope when the train operated by my Dad (an Amtrak train operated under contract to Conrail) "Clipped" his tripod and threw him away from the property with some injuries (thankfully not life threatening).

Dad had to take time to go and testify that essentially "Some idiot was standing too close to the tracks and we hit him doing 79 mph, by the time I could recognize it was a person it was too late to stop the train safely and avoid hitting him" What a farce, I think Amtrak/Conrail also settled that case just to keep the costs down....

I do feel for the engineer, years of training, careful operation of a massive amount of energy and some stupid persons put lives at risk for something of so little value, a few minutes of film footage for a movie, what a senseless accident......

My Dad was fortunate, 49 years as a fireman and engineer with no fatalities, partly skill and partly luck. He never was involved in a fatal road crossing accident in all those years. Several of his coworkers had 2,3,4,5 fatal road crossing accidents in their careers.

Just to confuse things some more, early reports claimed that the railroad did not own the land under the track, but only had some kind of permission from the paper company which did own the property to run trains across it.

Perhaps the technical legal definition of an easement?

The Los Angles Times newspaper has a short Q&A with the parents of Ms. Jones:
Q&A: Parents of 'Midnight Rider' crew member killed by train decry 'safety bubble' mentality on sets

The final quote is worthwhile:

If you mean the group that has been charged and convicted with general stupidity, then yes, I agree. They took a risk that there wouldn't be any more trains and lost, big time.

If you mean "the film crew" in general, then I don't agree. It's not at all uncommon for a film crew that has full permission to be on the railroad to have to wait for trains to go by. They don't always shut down totally. You let the "real" trains through, you get your protection in place, and you go out and shoot.

The director etc should have known better. But for the rest of the bunch, it was totally understandable that they would believe they had permission, and think that after the trains went by, they could occupy the tracks. As I've mentioned before, it's not at all unusual for film crews to work in locations that aren't accessible to the general public. We've all seen chases shot in the LA river, that sort of thing. So I can understand why the crew in general wouldn't question things.