(The following story by Ken Crites appeared on the Minot Daily News website on January 8.)
MINOT, N.D. — A wrongful death lawsuit is being filed in Minnesota as a result of the Jan. 18, 2002, Canadian Pacific Railway derailment west of Minot.
A Fargo firm is handling the legal action brought by the family of John Grabinger. Grabinger died from exposure to massive amounts of anhydrous ammonia that spewed from ruptured rail tank cars near his home in Tierrecita Vallejo early in the morning nearly two years ago.
Grabinger’s body was found on the driveway of a neighbor’s home in the sub-division after he and his wife had sought to escape in their pickup from the cloud of gas from the train. The truck crashed into a neighbor’s house in the cloud. His wife reached shelter in the home, but 1was injured by the exposure to the ammonia.
The suit was filed in Hennepin County Court in Minneapolis, because Minneapolis is CP Rail’s U.S. headquarters and because the two-year statute of limitations is fast approaching.
The law firm of Nilles, Hansen & Davies Ltd. is handling the suit on behalf of the family. The attorney assigned the suit could not be reached by The Minot Daily News for comment on Tuesday.
Thousands of other people contend they were also injured by the toxic fumes that spread out and lingered over the Souris River Valley.
A raft of other lawsuits is said to be pending. The holdup has been the lack of a final report from the National Transportation Safety Board concerning the accident’s cause. There has been a great deal of speculation about when the report will be released.
Ted Turpin, the lead investigator of a NTSB team who has an office in California, came to Minot shortly after the derailment.
During a news conference before he left town, he said a preliminary cause of the derailment was a 25-foot section of rail that had been installed as a temporary fix for a defective rail. The section had been joined to the rail with steel brackets that apparently failed, causing the section to come loose.
There have been numerous delays in publishing the report. Turpin said he had been wrong so many times about the release date that he had given up making predictions.
The latest suggested dates were the end of December and the anniversary of the derailment on Jan. 18. Now, it has been reported the release date might be next month or beyond.