Lawsuits In Canadian Pacific Train Derailment Stay

By BLAKE NICHOLSON

BISMARCK, N.D. (AP) — The unofficial spokesman for people affected by a train derailment and chemical spill in Minot, N.D., seven years ago has settled a lawsuit with Canadian Pacific Railway Ltd. Others appear headed for trial next year in Minneapolis barring intervention by the U.S. Supreme Court.

The lingering lawsuits were not part of a class action case that ended in late 2007, when a federal judge in Bismarck approved a $7 million settlement involving more than 3,000 victims of the wreck that federal investigators blamed on the railroad.

That settlement resolved the majority of cases but did not include hundreds of people who had filed individual lawsuits or who opted out of the class action case to move forward in the courts on their own. Most of those people settled with the railroad earlier. ...