Lawsuits In Canadian Pacific Train Derailment Stay

Lundeen did not give details of the offer but said it was one "we felt satisfied with."

"I guess the railroad wanted to be done with us just as much as we wanted to be done with the railroad," he said.

The Jan. 18, 2002, derailment on the west edge of Minot sent a cloud of toxic anhydrous ammonia farm fertilizer over the city. It killed one man who tried to escape the fumes and sent others to the hospital with eye and lung problems. The man who died — John Grabinger — lived in the same development as the Lundeen family, near the wreck site.

In March 2006, U.S. District Judge Daniel Hovland ruled in Bismarck that federal law protected CP Rail from claims stemming from the derailment. Congress later changed the law to allow people to bring personal-injury lawsuits against railroads in state courts under certain circumstances. A three-judge 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals panel last July upheld the congressional action in a 2-1 decision, reviving the Lundeen group of lawsuits.

Canadian Pacific, which challenged the constitutionality of the federal law change, has asked for a U.S. Supreme Court hearing. The high court, which gets thousands of requests but hears only several dozen cases each year, will decide this spring whether to take up the matter.