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"Minot derailment victims win 8th Circuit case"

"Minot derailment victims win 8th Circuit case": The Associated Press provides a report that begins, "The 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has ruled that a federal law change approved in response to a deadly train derailment and chemical spill on the edge of Minot is constitutional. Legislation signed by President Bush last August says people can bring personal-injury lawsuits against railroads in state court under certain circumstances. A federal judge had ruled earlier that the Federal Railroad Safety Act protected Canadian Pacific Railway from such claims stemming from the January 2002 Minot derailment. Congress later changed the law. Canadian Pacific argued the change was unconstitutional."

In January 2008, The Minneapolis Star Tribune published an article about the case headlined "When justice knows no timetable: Nearly six years to the day after a train derailed in Minot, N.D., injuring hundreds in a cloud of anhydrous ammonia, the latest round of a court battle opens for those seeking compensation."

And in July 2007, The Associated Press published an article headlined "Open door for Minot train derailment victims."

You can access today's ruling, by a divided three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit, at this link.

The case presents an interesting separation of powers issue: may the U.S. Congress retroactively "clarify" federal law to specify an absence of preemptive intent after the question of preemption has already been decided on appeal, U.S. Supreme Court review of the preemption question has been denied, and the underlying claims have been dismissed by a federal district judge on remand from the Eighth Circuit's earlier ruling, which found federal preemption under the Federal Railroad Safety Act. The majority in today's ruling answers "yes." The result is to revive the plaintiffs' claims, the merits of which will now be addressed in state court.

Full post as published by How Appealing on July 02, 2008 (boomark / email).