Amtrak facing costly personal-injury claims from crash victims

Amtrak likely faces hundreds of millions of dollars in claims from victims of the derailment at Frankford Junction, according to personal-injury lawyers who specialize in transportation accidents.

Because Congress capped such payouts for Amtrak in 1997, money to compensate victims probably will fall short of what is needed, these lawyers say.

Under the Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act, damages paid by the government to people injured in Amtrak derailments and to families of those passengers killed was limited to $200 million per crash. But with eight killed and about 200 of the 238 passengers injured, some very seriously, claims from this week's crash almost surely will exceed that amount.

"You can assume almost everyone suffered some kind of injury," said lawyer Nancy Winkler, whose firm, Eisenberg Rothweiler Winkler Eisenberg & Jeck P.C., specializes in accident cases. "When you have someone who is alive and needs ongoing medical care for the rest of their life, the cost can be $15 million or $20 million or more."

Tom Kline of the personal-injury firm Kline & Specter said that "given the enormity of the accident, even without assessing the wage loss of some of the folks on the train who seem to be significant earners, I would not believe that a $200 million fund would be adequate."

An Amtrak employee filed the first suit from the crash Thursday in federal court in Philadelphia. Bruce A. Phillips, 37, of the 2800 block of South 67th Street in Southwest Philadelphia, seeks more than $150,000 plus punitive damages.

Phillips suffered a concussion, contusions, lacerations, and "multiple orthopedic and neurological injuries" when the train derailed, said his lawyer, Mike Olley, whose firm - Coffey Kaye Myers & Olley - specializes in representing rail workers and passengers in derailments.

A dispatcher, Phillips was heading to New York's Penn Station to begin a work shift, his attorney said, when the derailment tossed him about in one of the train's rear cars.

The complaint filed Thursday in Philadelphia accuses Amtrak of "failing to properly and safely operate the train, operating the train at an excessive speed," and other alleged failures. It also targets Amtrak for "failing to provide available, necessary and appropriate systems to slow and/or stop the train."

Others also have obtained legal representation. The personal-injury law firm of Saltz, Mongeluzzi, Barrett & Bendesky P.C. said that it was representing two crash victims who had been referred to the firm. Others are actively soliciting clients. Silvers, Langsam & Weitzman P.C., also known as MyPhillyLawyer, issued a release Wednesday offering condolences to the victims while noting that it was representing victims of another Amtrak crash, in North Carolina in March.

Many of the key facts of the derailment remain unknown, and it is unclear whether operator error or mechanical failure caused the crash. But there is a consensus among lawyers who have represented accident victims in similarly catastrophic crashes that it is unlikely Amtrak will escape liability.

That is in part because the train reportedly was traveling at more than 100 m.p.h., more than twice the speed limit, when it entered the curve, where it derailed. (Another fatal crash occurred nearby in 1943, claiming 79 lives.) Adding to Amtrak's potential liability is the rail line's failure to install an electronic train control system on the curve that would have detected the train's excessive speed and automatically applied its brakes, lawyers say.

"This looks like a preventable disaster," said James Ronca, a lawyer with the personal-injury firm Anapol Schwartz. "I handle a lot of bus crashes, and in every instance, if people had been following the safety rules, the disaster would have been preventable."

One possible outcome in this case, Kline and Winkler said, is that the government will set up a compensation fund, along the lines of funds set up for 9/11 survivors and the victims of the BP gulf oil disaster.

Such funds typically are run by administrators such as attorney Kenneth Feinberg, who administered the 9/11 victims' fund and who functioned as a mediator sorting out claims in the Pennsylvania State University child sex-abuse cases.

Like the Penn State case, Amtrak's liability at some point may seem so clear-cut that settlement efforts begin quickly, Kline said. He said he anticipated any litigation over the Amtrak crash to take no more than three years.

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