A federal court judge in Philadelphia has signed off on a $265 million settlement program for all pending claims in connection with the May, 2015 Amtrak Train #188 derailment.
Lawyers involved in the Amtrak 188 litigation believe it’s the largest payout of its kind in the US, since the federal damages cap for railway accidents was previously $200 million.
Victims will be compensated now, rather than the 3-5-years he estimates it would take to litigate more than 125 pending cases.
Investigators looking into the Amtrak 188 derailment concluded that the engineer accelerated the train to 106 miles per hour, instead of slowing to the 50-mile per hour limit on that dangerous curve. They say he lost his bearings likely because he was distracted by radio talk about a SEPTA train struck by rocks.
