(The following story by Paul Levy appeared on the Star Tribune website on December 10, 2009.)
MINNEAPOLIS, Minn. — Did an Anoka County court overestimate the value of four young people’s lives lost in a 2003 car-train crash when a jury awarded the surviving families $6 million apiece?
Two months after a Washington County judge chastised Burlington Northern Santa Fe for a “staggering” pattern of misconduct aimed at covering up its role in the deaths of the four people in the collision at an Anoka crossing, the railroad filed four notices of appeal — one for each victim’s family. The notices, filed with the Minnesota Court of Appeals, questioned the court’s $21.6 million award to the families last year and an additional $4 million in sanctions awarded to the families and their attorneys by Judge Ellen Maas in October.
“It’s unprecedented,” Tim Thornton, the Minneapolis attorney handling the railroad’s appeal, said Thursday of the near $6 million apiece awarded to the families of Bridgette Shannon, 17, of Ramsey; Corey Chase, 20, of Coon Rapids; Brian Frazier, 20, of Ham Lake, and Harry Rhoades Jr., 20, of Blaine. That $21.6 million — which came after the jury placed 90 percent of the blame for the crash on Burlington Northern — was among the highest jury awards ever in Minnesota.
“There’s not a verdict that comes close to this for young adults and minors,” said Thornton, who did not represent Burlington Northern in court during last year’s jury trial.
But Bob Pottroff, a Kansas attorney representing the families, said a value can indeed be placed on a relationship between these four young persons and their parents.
“Counsel, comfort, guidance, aid, assistance, advice, protection and companionship are worth something, and in Minnesota, the law says those are economic losses,” Pottroff said. “Are those values worth $6 million? No, they’re probably worth 10 times that, if we’re going to be conservative.
“The Environmental Protection Agency’s stated value of a statistical life is $6.9 million,” Pottroff said. “After what’s been cited in this case, I’d say Burlington Northern has little to complain about.”
Putting a dollar figure on life
Judges and juries put a value on life every day, said Kenneth Feinberg, a Washington, D.C., attorney who served as special master of the federal compensation fund that distributed $7 billion to more than 5,000 victims and families of victims of Sept. 11. He also helped distribute $8 million in a memorial fund for the 32 people killed in the 2007 Virginia Tech killings. “In this country, valuing lives can be a pretty cold-hearted methodology,” he said.
The first step is calculating what the victim would have earned over a lifetime. Feinberg won about $2 million in a case involving an 8-year-old’s death. “You go to the jury and say, ‘My son was an all-A student,'” he said. “‘He wanted to go to med school.’ [Second,] then you get to the darling of lawyers representing the victim: pain and suffering … ‘Ladies and gentleman of the jury, in addition to the economic loss, can you imagine what these kids went through? For 32 seconds … he saw what was coming.’ Then the other side says: ‘Instant death. Never knew what hit them. No fear. No pain and suffering.'”
A third factor: Emotional distress of survivors, he said.
Jury says gate failed
A freight train traveling west at 59 miles per hour on Sept. 26, 2003, hit Frazier’s car as it crossed the tracks around 10 p.m. at Ferry Street, just north of Hwy. 10 in Anoka. Burlington Northern said the driver ignored a warning signal and tried to beat the crossing gate, but a jury concluded the gate wasn’t working properly.
The railroad’s notices of appeal, filed Wednesday, question the “inherent authority” of Judge Maas, who awarded the $4 million in sanctions. Maas found that the railroad lost or fabricated evidence, interfered with the families’ investigation of the accident and “knowingly advanced lies, misleading facts and/or misrepresentations” to conceal the truth.