The San Francisco Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) has agreed to pay $1.3 million to a local woman whose son was shot and killed by an officer more than two years ago. The man was traveling home on a rail car when a fight broke out, the lawsuit stated. He was lying face down on a rail platform unarmed when an officer fatally shot him. The Los Angeles Times reported the officer believed he was drawing his Taser and not his pistol.

A 38-year-old Amtrak attendant has filed a lawsuit against a trucking company after one of its truck crashed into an Amtrak train in Nevada, killing six people. The plaintiff claims in her lawsuit that the driver of the truck “negligently and carelessly failed to heed railroad warning signs” before crashing into the train. Safety investigators said skid marks at the scene show the driver slammed on his breaks about 100 yards before the railroad crossing, but they say it is unclear as to why he did not slow down earlier.

Big Lots has issued a recall of about 30,000 metal futon bunk beds after an Iowa child got his head and neck trapped, suffocating to death. The recall covers beds sold at Big Lots across the country between January 2009 and April 2010.

A lawsuit has been filed against Memorial Hospital Jacksonville over the death of a 74-year-old woman in December of last year from sepsis. The suit claims her infection “spawned from drug-resistant staph, commonly called MRSA, [the plaintiff] picked up at the hospital.” The suit is seeking monetary damages to cover medical, funeral and legal expenses.

A Massachusetts family has filed a lawsuit against the companies that installed and maintained an escalator at Auburn Mall over the death of the family’s four-year-old boy. In March, the boy was pulled into a gap between the escalator and a plexiglass barrier, and he fell a story down to the ground below. The suit alleges the companies involved failed to install a small barrier to close the gap in 2009, despite it being called for in the plans and permits issued by the city. The lawsuit is seeking unspecified damages.

A Houston, Texas, woman has filed a lawsuit against CenterPoint Energy, claiming the company and others are responsible for a two-car accident that killed her eight-month-old daughter in May. According to the lawsuit, the stoplight at the intersection where the accident occurred was not working due to maintenance by the company, which led to the accident. “The sole reason this accident happened was because they didn’t advise anyone nor did they take steps to control the traffic once they turned out the lights,” the plaintiff’s lawyer told the Houston Chronicle. The suit is seeking unspecified damages.

The family of an eight-year-old boy who drowned in 2009 has filed a lawsuit against the state of Utah and Salt Lake City, claiming the parties were negligent in failing to prevent the boy’s death. The boy was walking across a Jordan River canal pipe when he fell into the water and drowned. The suit claims city and state had done nothing to keep people off the pipes and out of the area, even though they knew it to be potentially dangerous. The suit is seeking unspecified damages.

The city of San Diego has agreed to a $1.8 million settlement with a local family over the death of a motorcyclist in April 2009. The lawsuit claimed the city could have prevented the accident by installing a traffic signal at the intersection where the incident occurred. Records show that a dozen accidents occurred at that intersection between 2006 and 2009.

The fatal shooting of a Grand Junction, Colo., man by a state trooper has prompted a wrongful death lawsuit against the department and the trooper responsible. The lawsuit, filed by the man’s family, claims the officer “acted illegally” in shooting the man while investigating a potential drunk driving case. The Denver Post reported that the victim was unarmed at the time of the shooting.

The Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department has agreed to a $1 million settlement in a lawsuit filed over the death of a mentally ill man two years ago at the hands of police officers. The officers had entered the man’s home to bring him in for a mental evaluation – he suffered schizophrenia and bipolar disorder – when the man attempted to escape. One of the officers used a neck hold to restrain the man, and the medical examiner ruled the man’s death was from “cardiopulmonary arrest as a result of the neck restraint.”