After the train wreck in L.A., a train wreck in court

The National Law Journal
Amanda Bronstad / Staff reporter
September 16, 2008

LOS ANGELES - Lawyers with expertise in personal injury litigation against railroads anticipate that more than 100 lawsuits seeking up to $500 million in damages could be filed stemming from last week's crash involving a commuter train in Los Angeles that killed 26 people.

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On Friday afternoon, a northbound Metrolink train carrying about 220 passengers collided head-on with a freight train operated by Union Pacific Railroad Co., which was heading southbound on the same track, near Chatsworth, a suburb of Los Angeles. In addition to the deaths, more than 130 are believed to be injured, some in severe condition.

The accident is the worst in the history of Metrolink, which provides commuter service to the Los Angeles area.

The National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has begun investigating the cause of the crash, but a Metrolink spokeswoman, who has since resigned, said soon after the accident that the commuter line's engineer failed to heed a red signal on the rail line alerting him to the oncoming freight train. It's unclear whether the engineer failed to acknowledge the signal or whether the signal was malfunctioning.

Either way, a substantial number of lawsuits are anticipated to be filed against Metrolink.

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Even if Metrolink retracts its statement, the commuter service would bear the brunt of the blame, as long as the NTSB's investigation does not conclude that poor maintenance of the signals or certain actions by the Union Pacific engineer could have contributed to the crash.

In that respect, the Chatsworth crash mimics a 2002 head-on collision involving a Metrolink train and a freighter operated by Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp., which later admitted fault. That accident occurred when the crew of the BNSF train missed a warning signal in Placentia, Calif., killing three people and injuring more than 260.

The BNSF crash, as well as a 2005 accident that killed 11 people, resulted in more than 100 lawsuits each. BNSF settled most of the litigation from its crash for an undisclosed amount.

A more recent incident involved a Metrolink train and the driver of an SUV that was left on the tracks in Glendale, Calif. In that crash, about a third of the lawsuits have settled for an undisclosed sum, while the others are pending. The first trial in those cases is anticipated to take place in February, said Kevin Boyle, a partner at Los Angeles-based Panish, Shea & Boyle, whose firm represented about a dozen passengers in both prior Metrolink accidents.

The driver of the truck was convicted in June to felony murder and sentenced to 11 life sentences.

When compared to both prior cases, Metrolink faces greater liability this time around, Boyle said. "There are just simply more injuries and more deaths and more damages to people," he said.

Some lawyers also mentioned Metrolink's practice of rewarding bonuses to employees, including engineers, who maintain on-time schedules. Such a practice, they said, promotes the type of carelessness that lead to the recent Chatsworth incident as well as other accidents.

"I just think that Metrolink has this hurry-up culture that is leading to these problems," Boyle said.

James Wakefield, a partner at Cummins & White, who represented Metrolink in past accident cases, said he had not been retained in the Chatsworth crash and declined to comment.

Francisco Oaxaca, a spokesman for the Southern California Regional Rail Authority, which operates Metrolink, declined to comment.