(The Associated Press circulated the following story on June 23.)
WILMINGTON, N.C. — CSX Transportation has settled a lawsuit with Pitt County landowners near the site of a train derailment in 2000 that resulted in a 35,000-gallon chemical spill.
The terms of the agreement weren’t immediately available. A lawyer for the eight landowners did not return a call Tuesday.
The settlement Monday followed a judge’s ruling that a jury could consider punitive damages in the suit.
The landowners sued CSX in 2001, alleging that company employees and contract workers trespassed, damaged property and stored hazardous chemicals on their property after a 38-car train jumped the track into Grindle Creek in northern Pitt County in February 2000 and 15 cars derailed.
Thousands of gallons of ethylene glycol, a chemical found in antifreeze, spilled. Five cars caught fire and burned for 11 hours. Nearby residents were evacuated and workers spent months cleaning up.
A jury trial on the case was scheduled for Monday afternoon, but was canceled after the parties agreed on a settlement. Before the settlement was reached, Superior Court Judge Russell Duke denied a motion for summary judgment and approved one to consolidate the three cases filed by landowners.
In one case, Roland Kenneth Manning Sr. and his son, Roland Manning Jr., said cleanup workers damaged a dirt farm road that ran to the site.
Frank Gordon, a lawyer for CSX, said CSX offered $15,000 and then $50,000 to settle, but the offers were turned down. The Mannings said in one court filing that the cost of repairing the roadway would exceed $70,000.
The landowners sued for trespass, inverse condemnation, punitive damages and strict liability.
CSX was responding to an emergency and Manning never revoked permission for workers to use the road, Gordon said.