By admin 
Forty-one current and former workers at Union Pacific’s Roseville railyard, including 11 who have died, were named in six lawsuits filed Wednesday alleging the railroad failed to protect employees from toxic substances that caused cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and other serious illnesses.
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Thirty of the workers are living with illnesses they attributed to workplace exposure, some of which did not develop until after decades of work at the J.R. Davis Yard, said Carisa German-Oden, one of the attorneys representing the plaintiffs. The families of 11 deceased workers alleged that exposure to asbestos, diesel exhaust, benzene and other hazardous substances contributed to their deaths.
The J.R. Davis Yard is “the largest rail yard west of the Rockies,” according to Union Pacific. It is one of the busiest rail terminals on the West Coast and a major hub for Northern California rail traffic.
The workers named in the lawsuits were diagnosed with a range of illnesses, including COPD, kidney disease, pulmonary fibrosis, multiple myeloma, leukemia and cancers of the throat and blood. Some began working for Union Pacific as early as the 1950s, in jobs that included track maintenance, signal maintenance, conducting and engineering. About six continued to work for the railroad, German-Oden said.
The plaintiffs requested jury trials to determine damages, according to the complaints filed in San Francisco Superior Court.
The plaintiffs, represented by the law firms Poolson Oden and Grant & Eisenhofer, alleged that Union Pacific failed to provide adequate protective equipment or warn employees about hazardous exposures. The railroad had known about some of the dangers since the 1930s, German-Oden said.
“They’ve known for a long time,” German-Oden said. “What has been clear is that even with that knowledge, they have not you know they did not develop warnings. They didn’t give proper PPE. There was nothing really given to the employees.”
Toxic exposure is not unique to the Roseville railyard, German-Oden said. However, the J.R. Davis Yard had been studied more extensively than other rail facilities over the previous three decades.
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In a 2004 assessment, the California Air Resources Board estimated that locomotives operating at the railyard in 2000 particulate matter annually within the yard and surrounding areas. The agency used computer modeling to estimate cancer risks for nearby residents, but not for railyard workers.
For residents in an area northwest of the locomotive service tracks, the estimated additional cancer risk exceeded 500 cases per million people over 70 years of exposure.
Railroad workers generally must seek compensation for job-related injuries through the federal courts under the Federal Employers’ Liability Act rather than through state workers’ compensation. To recover damages, they must establish that negligence by the railroad contributed to their injuries, said Danny Poolson, another attorney involved in the case.
“These guys and gals go to a dangerous job every day, work crazy hours, miss tons of family events to provide for them… They put themselves in harm’s way every day, and that protection is not there for them,” Poolson said.
The Roseville lawsuits followed similar litigation filed in September by more than 125 railroad workers against Norfolk Southern Railway Co. in Philadelphia, according to a spokesperson for the law firms representing the plaintiffs.
Poolson said the immediate goal was to secure compensation for workers and their families. The attorneys also hoped the litigation would lead to changes in workplace safety practices that German-Oden alleged remained dangerous.
This story was originally published October 17, 2026 at 9:00 AM with the headline “41 Roseville railyard workers, families sue Union Pacific over cancer, toxic exposure.”
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