RGR v. Settle: Lumber Stacks, Blocked Sightlines, and Virginia's Duty of Ordinary Care
A truck driver approaches a private rail crossing he cannot see down — because a company has stacked lumber near the tracks, walling off the view of oncoming trains. A train comes. He is killed. Is the company that built the wall of lumber legally responsible?
At the end of last month, the Supreme Court of Virginia said yes. In RGR, LLC v. Settle, 288 Va. 260, 764 S.E.2d 8 (Va. Oct. 31, 2014) — an opinion issued on rehearing, following the court's original decision this past June — Chief Justice Kinser's opinion affirmed the jury's verdict for the family in this wrongful death case, and in the process reaffirmed a principle that runs through all of Virginia negligence law: everyone owes a duty of ordinary care not to create hazards that endanger others.
The holding: duty flows from conduct
RGR argued, in essence, that it owed the decedent nothing — that a company stacking its own lumber on land near a crossing has no legal duty to passing truck drivers. The Supreme Court rejected that framing. A landowner or occupier owes a common-law duty of reasonable care not to create hazardous conditions that endanger travelers. By placing lumber stacks where they obstructed the sightlines at the crossing, RGR created exactly such a hazard — and a jury was entitled to find that doing so was negligent.
This matters well beyond rail crossings. The duty recognized in RGR is not premised on a special relationship, a contract, or a statute. It flows from the defendant's own conduct: when what you do creates a foreseeable danger to others, Virginia law expects you to use ordinary care. That principle reaches the contractor whose equipment blocks a sidewalk, the business whose signage obscures an intersection, the property owner whose vegetation swallows a stop sign.
Contributory negligence: for the jury, not a trapdoor
The defense's second theory was Virginia's favorite: contributory negligence. The truck driver, RGR argued, should have done more to protect himself at the crossing — and under Virginia's unforgiving rule, any negligence by the decedent would bar recovery entirely.
The Supreme Court held that the decedent's contributory negligence was properly a question for the jury rather than a bar as a matter of law. The jury heard the evidence — including what the driver could and could not see, thanks to RGR's lumber — and resolved the question in the family's favor. That resolution stands.
This is the quieter but equally important half of the decision. In a contributory negligence jurisdiction, the difference between "the judge decides you were careless" and "the jury weighs the evidence" is frequently the difference between losing at a hearing and winning at trial. A plaintiff whose view was blocked by the defendant's own hazard is not careless as a matter of law for failing to see what could not be seen.
There is a certain justice in that pairing: the same lumber stacks that created the danger also answered the defense. A company cannot obstruct a traveler's view and then insist the traveler should be faulted, as a matter of law, for not seeing through the obstruction. Juries are well equipped to sort out what a reasonable driver could perceive and do in those final seconds — and Virginia's highest court has confirmed that the sorting is theirs to do.
What this means for injured people in Virginia
- "We didn't owe you anything" just got harder to argue. Defendants in unusual fact patterns love to fight about duty, because duty is a legal question a judge can resolve before a jury ever hears the case. RGR reaffirms that creating a foreseeable hazard is itself the source of duty.
- Sightline cases have a strong new precedent. Obstruction cases — vegetation, parked trailers, stacked materials, badly placed structures — now have a clear statement from Virginia's highest court that the obstruction's creator can be liable to those it endangers.
- Contributory negligence is a jury argument, not an automatic exit. Where reasonable minds can differ about the injured person's conduct — especially when the defendant's own hazard limited what the person could perceive — the question belongs to the jury.
- Verdicts, once won, can be defended. The family here won at trial and kept the verdict through rehearing at the Supreme Court. Trials are risks; this decision shows the system honoring a jury's careful work.
We try wrongful death and serious injury cases throughout Virginia, Maryland, and the District, and RGR will be in our briefs for years to come. If you or a loved one has been hurt, call Posey Lebowitz at (202) 524-0123 or send us a message for a free consultation.
Part of our DMV case law archive, compiled in 2026 to reflect the archive of some of the most important decisions in injury law.
Update: The foreseeability-based duty framework applied here was reaffirmed and extended in 2018 — see our coverage of Quisenberry v. Huntington Ingalls.