Chatsworth crash survivors, victims learn their share of $200 million settlement

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Rescue crews use heavy equipment to dismantle the damaged trains and continue to search for survivors at the site of a train crash on Sept. 13, 2008 in Chatsworth, Calif.

Almost three years after that deadly Metrolink train crash in Chatsworth, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge has announced how he’ll divide a $200 million settlement.

Judge Peter Lichtman spent three months hearing from 122 people injured or related to someone killed in the crash. He awarded damages that ranged from $12,000 to $9 million. Attorney Paul Kiesel, who represents some of the plaintiffs, said one of his clients was in law school at the time of the crash but suffered a brain injury that likely ended her hopes of becoming a lawyer.

"Her economic damages were $2.5 million, and her recovery is $400,000. That puts a real -life perspective on what the Court needed to do," he said.

The court needed to do that because of a federal law that caps the damages for train accidents at $200 million. In his ruling, Judge Lichtman wrote that the cap forced him to make some impossible decisions. The money, he explained, was at least $64 million short of the damages he wanted to award.

"The first best hope is that the company does the responsible thing and puts up $64 million to actually compensate those that suffered losses here," Kiesel said.

The company is Veolia Transportation, who employed the engineer found to be sending text messages when a Metrolink commuter train ran a stop signal and slammed into a Union Pacific freight train. Veolia has agreed to pay the $200 million, and in a statement, said the amount is the largest financial recovery in the history of passenger rail and exceeds the amounts paid to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.