…or “share the blame”.
A terrible wreck and a tragedy. Maybe they should get the shipper and car owner to help collaborate on ways to improve, detect defects, and reduce risk rather than suing them… what do you think?
Frankly, the thing that made this wreck so terrible was not the bearing failure and the lessons it gave us, but the misguided plan to torch all five vinyl-chloride cars together.
Oxi-Vinyl has less than no ‘liability’ here – they were actively noting their material had been stabilized/inhibited, but no one in positions of site-command authority would listen.
Was it ever established that GATX was buying known-cheap bearings, or shaving money on wheel sets or periodic repair? One of the things quietly established, whether it was part of the Government dog-and-pony show, was that no fixed interval of detection assured safety from some types of roller-bearing failure… not, in particular, 10-mile spacing. Another was that no sane increase in car inspection time would catch an impending inner-bearing (or inner-axle) fracture, even with specialized equipment.
To me the proximate cause was chickenshit advice from the hired wreck consultants, grossly compounded by local officials flexing power to run the show. Because they got spooked when a safety valve unexpectedly went off next to an employee, they made a (somewhat incomprehensible) decision to detonate all five cars, in very cold weather, without controlled flame holding… and the results were only surprising in the size of their consequence to the environment. Of course the squabbling incident command guys will plead some kind of statutory immunity, but I’m less sure about the “consultants” – guess their insurance turned out not to go too far.
Yes, what needed to come out of this was to face up to the need to resolve the operating danger (which I continue to think involves continuous monitoring and not even stunningly complex arrays of cameras and fused sensors at key gateway locations). To my knowledge, that has been sidestepped (even as worthless agendas of various kinds get predictably pushed).
NS is trying to avoid what’s going to become the largest judgment against a defendant in civil litigation in history. This case is going to make even the Deep water Horizon judgment look like a fart in the wind. I’m hearing 300 to 400 billion dollar amounts being thrown out by some of my cousins in the insurance industry.
Agree, litigation fails as a method of prevention because it is too targeted against a single carrier and a lot of times the carrier makes a cost vs benefit analysis with probability they might or might not get sued in the future.
Far better to just work with the carrier or other parties involved and agree to rules. Trial lawyers have made a mess of our society and civil discourse in places.
Bearing mounted defect detection has existed for decades. However the car owners are waiting on the railroads to guide them… Well wait long enough and the government will produce some asinine regulation that hurts everyone…
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Agree. A “smart” freight car with ECP braking and more is long overdue.
…yet again. PTC deja vu.
This accident was PSR to the extreme. When car inspection times are less than 1 minute a car bearing temperatures rising across multiple hot box detectors are ignored by NS due to not being hot enough. NS made their bed and now they’re about to finish the FAFO portion of what happens when you put the shareholders above safety and the responsibility of training your people properly.
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The established legal principle that has existed for quite some time is - if the car is on your property and fails for whatever the reason and with any and all resulting damage is payable by the carrier where the incident happened.
Several years ago, there was a incident where UP delivered a car in interchange to CSX (I think in New Orleans) with a reported interchange date and time. Shortly after the designated date and time the individual car created a catastrophic incident with damages in the hundreds of millions. CSX had not touched ANYTHING on the interchange track from the time the car was interchanged until the time of the event. Through multiple trials and resulting appeals it was adjudicated that CSX was on the hook for all the damages as a result of the incident.
I do not have the case citations.
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Right now NS is praying to anyone and anything that they might be able to avoid bankruptcy from this accident. This was an avoidable accident if they’d simply had a policy of decent inspection practices a better thermal threshold on a hotbox desk and oh yeah the man manning it was paying attention instead of being forced to man another desk also.
While NS is going to take a financial hit - bankruptcy is far, far, away.
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I doubt they have that much in insurance coverage or cash on hand to cover the judgements that are coming down the pipeline in this case.