Thomas Kuduk v. BNSF Railway Company

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding that an FRSA violation was an intentional tort requiring discriminatory animus, and cannot be committed unwittingly
• holding that a plaintiff must show that the “discharge decision makers” had actual or constructive knowledge of the protected activity in order to succeed in an FRSA retaliation action
• noting that the incident which got the employee fired “was completely unrelated to” his FRSA reporting
• observing that the employee’s protected activity, “though close in time, was completely unrelated” to the incident that led to the discipline
• agreeing that BNSF proved its affirmative defense after presenting “uncontroverted evidence that it consistently enforced this policy”
• finding that a plaintiff failed to satisfy the knowledge element of his FRSA retaliation claim when the decision-makers had no knowledge of his protected activity

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).