The trial, which began Tuesday, Sept. 3, and is tentatively scheduled for eight days, won’t focus on negligence. Attorneys for both the plaintiffs and the defendant, National Railroad Passenger Corp., told the eight-person jury that Amtrak has accepted responsibility for the accident, which occurred on the first revenue run of Amtrak Cascades service from Seattle to Portland on a route known as the Point Defiance Bypass.
Instead the jury will determine monetary compensation for plaintiffs Aaron Harris, Dale Skyllingstad, and Blaine Wilmotte. The suits don’t specify damages sought.
The transcript of opening arguments indicates that the focus will be on the recovery the plaintiffs have made from their injuries.
“We are trying to work together to figure out what is the right balance, what is the right amount to restore these folks to the things that have been taken away from them,” said David Beninger of the Luvera Law Firm in Seattle, representing the plaintiffs. Noting that the plaintiffs are now 31, 28 and 26, Beninger said the three injured men “are all going to have about 50 years to live with these things, the early dementia, the deterioration of the joints, the surgeries they are going to have, on top of everything they have already had.”
Mark Landman, an attorney with the New York firm Landman Corsi Ballaine & Ford representing Amtrak, told jurors “We are here because Amtrak was negligent. At the outset of this case, we admitted that we were liable for compensatory damages. We are. These people suffered awful injuries. It never should have happened.”
The plaintiffs, he added, “deserve full, fair compensation for the injuries that occurred, and those that are more likely than not to occur in the future. That’s the law. You are going to have to make a choice in this case. What is full and fair compensation?”
The use of expert witnesses by both sides will also be an issue. “There is going to be evidence that Amtrak had these folks surveilled,” Beninger said. “They sent people out to track them, to peep them, to follow them around. You will hear how that made them feel.”
“Your hearts and our hearts go out to these people for what they went through,” Landman said in his opening statement. “We would have ice water in our veins if they didn’t. It was awful, but they have made some incredible recoveries. And that’s what we are here to talk about is not just the recovery, but what are their damages.”
Harris and Skyllingstad were both passengers on the train; Harris suffered what his attorneys have described as traumatic brain injury and multiple serious fractures. Skyllingstad, who was ejected from the car in which he was riding, also suffered broken bones and internal injuries.
Wilmotte was injured when the pickup truck in which he was riding was hit by a train car that had tumbled from the tracks onto Interstate 5.
The docket for U.S. District Court in Western Washington lists at least a dozen other suits with Amtrak as a defendant.
The National Transportation Safety Board determined that the train took a curve, south of Tacoma near the community of DuPont, with a posted speed limit of 30 miles per hour a nearly 80 mph. Three people were killed and 65 were injured, 57 of those on the train and eight on Interstate 5.
