MONTREAL — Quebec’s Court of Appeals has upheld a lower-court ruling that found Canadian Pacific Railway was not legally responsible for the 2013 Lac-Mégantic disaster.
The Canadian Press reports that in a ruling today (Feb. 26, 2025), a three-judge court panel denied three appeals that sought to require CPR to pay into a compensation fund for victims of the derailment and fire involving a runaway oil train that killed 47 people.
A lower court ruled in 2022 that the railroad was not the “direct, immediate, and logical cause” of the incident, and ruled the train’s engineer, Thomas Harding, and its operator, the Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, bore that responsibility. The appeals court agreed, saying those appealing had failed to demonstrate that Superior Court Justice Martin Bureau had made numerous errors of fact and law.
The appellants had argued CPR bore responsibility because it originated the train carrying Bakken crude from North Dakota, organized its transport to a refinery in New Brunswick, and chose to use the MM&A despite that railroad’s unsafe practices [see “Lac-Mégantic residents appeal decision …,” Trains News Wire, Jan. 14, 2023].
Harding, MM&A dispatcher Richard Labrie, and operations manager Jean Demaître were found not guilty of criminal negligence in a 2018 jury trial over the July 6, 2013, disaster in Quebec. The Canadian government has promised to reroute the rail line through Lac-Mégantic, now owned by CPKC since CP’s 2020 purchase of the Central Maine & Quebec. But a bypass around the town remains stalled in the face of opposition from neighboring towns [see “Community withdraws from talks …,” News Wire, Nov. 14, 2024].
