East Palestine Residents Want More Time to Decide to Accept Settlement
Some East Palestine, Ohio residents want more time to decide to accept their share of a $600 million settlement with Norfolk Southern over last year’s train derailment. It is not clear whether the judge will rule on the motion before Thursday’s deadline for people who live within 20 miles of the derailment to file a claim. Residents who live within 10 miles of the February 3, 2023 crash near the Pennsylvania-Ohio border have to decide whether to accept up to $25,000 per person for personal injuries. The problem with accepting the money is that acceptance of the money means that they cannot sue the company later if cancer or another serious illness arises because of the harmful chemical exposure.
The amount someone receives depends on how close they lived to the derailment. People who lived within two miles for instance received 70,000 for property damage. People who lived near the outer edge of the area may only receive a couple hundred dollars. One major complaint in a motion filed by one attorney is that attorneys who represented residents in the lawsuit haven’t disclosed any of the results of testing done around town by their own expert. This expert has testified in hundreds of lawsuits about contamination concerns, helping to determine the extent of the contamination caused when toxic chemicals spilled and were burned after the derailment.
Some attorneys promised that expert data would be disclosed in court filings to showcase the impact the train derailment had on East Palestine. A lawyer asked the judge to order that information be released to address residents’ concerns. Another expert was brought out who claims that he doesn’t think residents in town will develop cancer as a result of the derailment. Data was not presented to back up these claims besides mentions of tests from the Environmental Protection Agency.
Researchers monitoring the health of residents in the area that are tracking respiratory problems, rashes, and other ailments say it will probably take years for the long-term implications of the derailment to become clear. A doctor disputes the claims from the expert that there will be little impact to human health from the derailment.
Some residents are complaining that the initial opt out deadline came less than a week after the National Transportation Safety Board held a hearing on its findings in the investigation.
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