Valhalla, New York– A settlement worth more than $182 million has been reached with victims of a fatal accident 2015 Collision between a train and an SUV At a crossing in a suburb of New York.
The majority of the settlement with Metro-North Rail goes to the families of five passengers killed when an SUV became stuck on the tracks in Valhalla, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) north of New York City, the Journal News reported. Reports.
About $79 million of the settlement will go to one specific passenger, based on his expected lifetime earnings, the newspaper reported. Payments to the families of other passengers killed in the crash range from $35 million to $4 million.
The Journal News reviewed the settlement last week before it was sealed by a judge and is no longer available to the public.
Jury in 2024 Found it Metro-North bears 71% of the responsibility for the death of the five passengers and injuries to others, and 63% for the death of the SUV driver whose car was on the tracks. The jury specifically censured the train’s engineer and the railroad’s oversight of the line’s electrified third track.
The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, which runs the commuter system that also serves parts of Connecticut, should have resolved the lawsuit sooner, said Andrew Maloney, an attorney for some of the roughly 30 injured passengers.
“This should not have taken 11 years,” he said Monday. “They pulled her out.”
Maloney added that the problems identified in the design of the third rail have not been corrected after all these years.
The MTA declined to comment on the details of the settlement. But it said in a statement that it has continued to work with state and federal transportation officials on “physical rail crossing safety improvements across the rail network over the past decade.”
The accident occurred on February 3, 2015 during the evening rush hour when the SUV was traveling on the tracks while navigating heavy traffic.
The crossing gate lever came down on the car and the driver ended up driving along the tracks.
The train struck the SUV at about 50 mph (80 km/h) after the engineer hit the emergency brakes just three seconds before the fiery impact. Parts of the third electrified railway line Separated from the Earththe gas tank of the SUV broke through and collided with the first passenger car of the train.