WEST CHESTER, Pa. — After 16 years, a lawsuit over chemical exposure at the Paoli Rail Yard has reached the end of the line in Chester County Court, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported.
Chester County Judge Robert J. Shenkin approved a settlement of $975,000 on Friday after listening to about 35 plaintiffs during a hearing last week on the proposed agreement. “If this is approved, this is the end of all litigation known to be pending,” Shenkin said of the settlement reached by the plaintiffs and three corporations listed as defendants.
The judge also approved counsel fees of $500,000 for the plaintiffs’ lawyers and $81,769 for their litigation costs. The remaining $393,240 will be distributed to about 1,000 plaintiffs who lived or worked near the yard and who claimed medical and economic liabilities from their exposure to polychlorinated biphenyls.
PCBs, once manufactured by defendant Monsanto Co. (now Solutia Inc.), were used for decades as a coolant in the transformers on rail cars at the yard and were dumped at the site. Because PCBs are a suspected human carcinogen, the property was classified a Superfund site in 1990. The other defendants – General Electric Co. and Westinghouse Electric Co. (now Viacom) – used PCBs in their transformers.
Conrail, Amtrak, Penn Central, Budd Co., SEPTA and the city of Philadelphia were also sued and previously settled for a total amount of $3.9 million, according to court records.