CSX Negligent Train Derailment and Nuisance Class Action

On August 2, 2017, just before five in the morning, a freight train derailed near Hyndman, Pennsylvania. Minutes later, Plaintiff Denora Diehl and about a thousand other people in the area were evacuated. Diehl was not permitted to return home until August 20. The complaint alleges an astonishing level of negligence on the part of the train’s operator, CSX Transportation, leading up to the accident, and nuisance for area residents.

The class for this action is all persons who lived within and had an interest in real property within the mandatory evacuation zone at the time of the train derailment.

The train consisted of five locomotives and 178 cars, 128 loaded and fifty empty. One of the complaint’s contentions is that the full and empty cars were not properly distributed. Fifteen tank cars were carrying hazardous materials, including three containing propane, eight containing molten sulfur, two containing asphalt, and two containing phosphoric acid residue.

Before the derailment, the train experienced air brake problems that caused the crew to stop it on a descending grade. They applied fifty-eight air brakes while inspecting and recharging the air brake system. After they discovered an air leak, a mechanical employee arrived, but failed to fix the problem.

Because the first crew was nearing the end of its duty time, a second crew took over the train, and the complaint says that CSX instructed them to continue the route. The complaint claims that the second crew was unable to move the train down the grade with all fifty-eight hand brakes applied and so released the first twenty-five of them. According to the complaint, the crew then pulled the train down the grade with locomotive power, reaching speeds of twenty to thirty miles per hour, with thirty-three hand brakes still applied.

On a curve, the complaint claims that the thirty-fifth car derailed one set of wheels, but the crew continued to drag it along for almost two miles. Then, at a highway-railroad grade crossing, the complaint says the car moved further off the rails, “initiating or contributing to the Derailment of the other railcars.”

The crew then applied the hand brakes, but, to quote the complaint, they did it “so negligently, carelessly, willfully, wantonly and/or recklessly that several wheels east and west of the derailed railcars had bluing due to brake pad friction and heat and had worn flat spots in the wheels and built-up tread from the hand-brakes which prevented the wheels from rotating.”

The thirty-third through the sixty-fifth cars derailed. The complaint says that a propane tank car and a molten sulfur tank car ruptured and caught fire, burning for more than two days.

Residents of the area were evacuated, and even after those like Diehl were permitted to return, the complaint says that CSX worked the site day and night, with bright lights and noisy heavy machinery, while residents suffered from noxious fumes and smoke. 

Article Type: Lawsuit
Topic: Consumer
Tags: Bad Odor, Fire, Nuisance