SETTLEMENT IN 2003 SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA TRAIN DERAILMENT LOS ANGELES, LA -- Dozens of people settled lawsuits before trial with Union Pacific Railroad over a 2003 accident in which runaway freight cars derailed and smashed into homes, injuring 13 people, an attorney said Friday. An agreement was reached with more than 40 people from several families during day-long negotiations Thursday before a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge, said David Benjamin, an attorney for the families. Details of the settlement were not disclosed but "for us it comes out a very happy ending" after four years of legal action, he said. No other legal actions in connection with the accident are pending, Benjamin said. Another lawsuit in the case ended in 2005 with a Los Angeles jury awarding $2.3 million to a family that lost two homes. A call to an attorney for Union Pacific was not immediately returned but the company acknowledged years ago that a mistake by its workers was responsible for the crash. The latest settlement came a day after the fourth anniversary of the June 20, 2003, accident. Authorities said workers forgot to lock brakes on boxcars, allowing 31 freight cars to get loose. The cars went 30 miles as railroad employees considered ways to stop them. They were traveling 86 mph when they were diverted onto a 15 mph-rated siding in Commerce, a suburb south of Los Angeles, to stop them. Twenty-eight cars derailed, spilling tons of lumber. Two homes were destroyed, six others heavily damaged and 13 people were injured. The National Transportation Safety Board concluded that the railroad failed to enforce its own safety rules, boxcar hand brakes were left off in the train yard, and dispatchers did not realize that the route was virtually all downhill. - The Associated Press, The Houston Chronicle
