(The Associated Press circulated the following story by Blake Nicholosn on May 1.)
BISMARCK, N.D. – About 3,100 Minot residents will share in a $7 million lawsuit settlement with Canadian Pacific Railway stemming from a derailment and chemical spill more than six years ago.
The majority of the people will get about $1,300, according to Gordon Rudd, a plaintiffs’ attorney in Minneapolis.
Chanhassen, Minn.-based Analytics Inc., a consulting firm that is administering the settlement, said checks were mailed Wednesday. The firm worked over the past several months to determine how many of the roughly 4,000 people who submitted claims under the settlement were eligible for money.
Claudia and Boyd Roberts are among the hundreds of Minot residents who have been waiting for the work to be completed. Boyd Roberts said whether people are happy with the $1,300 depends on the severity of the injuries they suffered from the disaster.
“I guess I’m undecided,” he said. “My wife developed lung cancer from it, we think, though (doctors) won’t verify that, so we didn’t really get enough to compensate for that. Luckily, we have some good insurance.
“Overall, I think most people are probably happy,” he said.
The Jan. 18, 2002, derailment on the western edge of Minot killed one man who tried to escape the cloud of toxic anhydrous ammonia that drifted over the city. The fumes sent hundreds to the hospital with eye and breathing problems.
U.S. District Judge Dan Hovland in Bismarck approved the class action settlement in the case last October. The three lead plaintiffs each get $25,000, and the plaintiff’s attorneys get a total of $2.9 million — leaving about $4 million of the settlement to be divided among the roughly 3,100 people deemed eligible for money.
The settlement in the class action case does not include people who filed individual lawsuits against the railroad, or the 228 people who opted out of the class action case to pursue their own lawsuits.
The settlement also excludes people who signed releases of liability for the railroad after Feb. 17, 2002, a month after the derailment. The 30-day “cooling-off” period is a matter of law. The railroad said earlier that the people who signed those releases each received several hundred dollars.
Rudd said people who signed a release before Feb. 18, 2002, before retaining an attorney, are getting “slightly less” than the $1,300.
Tim Thornton, attorney for Canadian Pacific, which is based in Calgary, Alberta, and has its U.S. headquarters in Minneapolis, said that the settlement “was done and over with as far as we were concerned quite a while ago. But it’s good to have it resolved.”
The mailing of checks does not end the legal wrangling stemming from the derailment.
The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in St. Louis has yet to rule on the constitutionality of a law passed by Congress and signed by President Bush that is retroactive to the date of the Minot derailment. The law says people can bring personal-injury lawsuits against railroads in state court under certain circumstances. The appeals court ruling will not affect the class action settlement.