The eight-member jury returned the verdict Friday afternoon, ruling that Dale Skyllingstad should receive $7.75 million. It also awarded Blaine Wilmotte $7 million and his wife Madison Wilmotte $2 million.
U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle declared a mistrial for another plaintiff, Aaron Harris, whose case had started with the others but then was suspended over a dispute concerning testimony by an expert witness as to Harris’ injuries. That case will be heard later.
The civil trial in U.S. District Court in Tacoma — in a building that once was its Union Station — was not about Amtrak’s liability for the wreck, in which three people were killed and scores injured. Amtrak’s attorney, Mark Landman, said at the outset that Amtrak acknowledged its negligence and accepted responsibility.
Instead testimony focused on the severity and permanence of the injuries Skyllingstad and Willmotte sustained, and the extent of their recoveries.
“The scars of this tragedy run deep — there are many we can’t see, and that may never heal,” David Beninger of Luvera Law Firm in Seattle, who represented the plaintiffs along with Chicago-based co-counsel Clifford Law Offices, said in a release. “This verdict is the first step in giving the victims and their families the justice that they deserve.”
Skyllingstad, described by his attorneys as a rail enthusiast and passenger aboard the train, suffered “a traumatic brain injury that has left lasting emotional effects, and other injuries including a broken pelvis, a spinal fracture, a cranial fracture and lacerations on his liver and kidney.” Skyllingstad was ejected from the car in which he was riding when the Amtrak Cascades train, making the first revenue run on the Point Defiance Bypass, derailed.
Blaine Wilmotte was riding in a pickup truck on Interstate 5, below the bridge where the train derailed, with a train car landing on the vehicle and “trapping him in excruciating pain for 90 minutes,” his attorneys reported in the release. Injuries included multiple broken bones, personality and behavior changes, anxiety, and a diminished capacity to work.
Madison Wilmotte, who was pregnant at the time of the crash, sought damages because of the impact of her husband’ injuries and the emotional toll on their marriage.
“Amtrak derailed these folks twice — first by ignoring obvious and important safety regulations, and then by trying to duck responsibility for the grave, lifelong trauma inflicted on their own customers and community members,” Beninger added in his statement after the verdict. “Fortunately, we have a strong justice system and a thoughtful jury that understood the serious impact on Mr. Skyllingstad and Mrs. and Mrs. Wilmotte, and we hope this decision can begin to provide them a measure of closure.”
A statement from Landman and Amtrak wasn’t immediately available.
Luvera Law Firm and Clifford Law Offices said they represent more than 30 other plaintiffs whose cases will also be heard in U.S. District Court before Judge Settle. The cases heard this week are believed to be the first stemming from the wreck to go to trial.
The lawyers usually get 33% of the verdict amount and nothing if they lose the case. Some people may not agree but, everyone is entitled to legal representation in this country. I’m pretty sure the plaintiffs didn’t want to represent themselves in court against a big corporation like Amtrak, who by the way, have their own high priced lawyers working for them. The legal system is stacked against the little guy. We need our lawyers too.
Yes, those amounts may in fact be reasonable. The plaintiffs will suffer the loss of income for the remainder of their lives and their medical expenses may be very high. They also will have lasting pain that cannot be fixed by money. But I’m wondering what percentage is going to the lawyers. They put in some work, but they won’t suffer from pain or have medical expenses and they can go on to other money making cases. For them, this is a gravy train.
Mister Pins:
SIR!
The above comments are generic in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They do not constitute legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn ambulance chaser.
Charles, Steve, and others – Of course, the legislative bodies that could enact tort reform are mostly composed of, wait for it,…lawyers. These lawyers are lobbied by, wait for it, …lawyers. Your arguments are strong, but ain’t nothing gonna change. Now to turn my TV on so I can hear the latest ambulance-chaser commercials promising me a substantial cash award.
Got to hand it to these lawyers. I’d be happy with medical bills paid and a little more for my trouble.
What about the liability of the engineer and conductor? Just asking a question.
How does money make these victims whole? All it can do is pay for their new, lifelong expenses necessary to live with/ endure the consequences.
How do they come up with these dollar amounts? The estimated present value of future medical benefits over the victim’s remaining life expectancy?
(Too many variables?). How do you value a human life? I understand the intent, but am at a loss at whole any reward makes a victim whole.
STEVE – Great post! You know what frosts me, the feel-good good-government goo-goo manthra that a democracy needs an “Independent Judiciary”. Thumbs down to that. The last thing a democracy needs is an Independent Judiciary. An Independent Judiciary is tyranny by judicial robes, which is exactly what we have in this country.
Judges must do what everyone else does : …. follow the law and the Constitution.
Every day I read about judges exercising powers granted to them neither by the Constitution nor by legislation. We have a dictatorship by judges. An absurd example is the California family court judge who declared Caitlyn Jenner, who is a man, is a woman. Where did the judge get the power to assign one’s gender? From God? I don’t think so. That case was silly and essentially harmless. Not so the other judicial diktats which the courts put together out of thin air, like Roe v. Wade and a thousand others like it.
STEVE – We’re stuck with juries because the Constitution requires juries. The problem the various legislative bodies (Congress and the several state legislatures) which fail to pass laws that would better define torts and the remedy to torts.
It is ironic that the civil trial was held in Tacoma Union Station tnat should never have been abandoned by Amtrak. None of this tragedy and the resulting suits would have occurred had Amtrak continued calling without interruption at this station.
The hardest problems I had negotiating for my employer, then later in my career overseeing all its negotiations, was with foreign entities, both private and governmental. They absolutely wanted nothing to do with the current USA legal system. They thought the USA had lost its mind with our current system of virtually no checks on “wild” jury awards. They also couldn’t believe that USA allowed a company that was as little as 1% negligent to be stuck with the entire jury award if it was the only entity with financial assets.
I saw enough as the years progressed to basically agree with them. Our civil liability system was not designed for the complexities of the modern world or the crushing case loads of today. Various lawyers representing all sides of an issue have told me that our civil legal system is “crashing” and getting layman juries out of the picture is the only way to really save it. They have also said that as long as there really isn’t any financial penalty to the plaintiff for their lawyer including parties that are later dismissed from the lawsuit by the judge or exonerated by the jury, they will always try to include as many corporations and others as they can in any lawsuit.
As for healthcare, I just shake my head at all the politicians who want only government run single payer health care but who never mention the US healthcare liability legal system. Without drastically reforming that, any chance of government single payer being successful is gone.
Yes, the awards for fake torts (weed killer, asbestos) are outrageous.
The awards for real, actual torts, like being maimed in a train crash, are too low.
Ian Narita and others saying that medical bills and a little for your trouble…this is the major problem with America today, it’s one of the reasons health care is so expensive(medical malpractice insurance costs a fortune). There needs to be major reform for Tort laws…just look at the insane amounts of money juries are awarding people for alleged impropriety on companies like Johnson & Johnson and Monsanto(sorry people, Johnson’s Baby Powder is not the cause of your cancer, nor is RoundUp).
$7.75 million, $7 million and $2 million…outrageous…personally I think $1 million each might be to much…instead of giving money to the plaintiffs, why not just cover medical expenses and potential earnings(if potential earnings are lost) and leave it at that…no pain and suffering or other extraneous items.
This can affect railroads too, especially since they’re basically self-insured…everyone sees corporations as deep pockets that you just use to line your own if injured.
In these cases, in my opinion, it was a matter of us how much money. Many of these injuries will need continuous care over many years. Without seeing the cases I will speculate that the question in two of the cases will be how much money will be needed to care for their injuries.
With Mrs Wilmotte, it sounds like, in addition to her injuries, she watched as her spouse was suffering on the scene, and now will be caring for her husband. This is emotionally very taxing, especially with being pregnant at the time.
In something like this, if you have to go to court, one needs an experienced attorney with the ability to properly investigate and then present to a court the extent of the injuries.
The money is never enough after an accident.
By the way in some states there are restrictions on how much someone can claim in a legal setting, even if the costs of care exceed those limits. If those costs exceed what can be claimed from a defendant in court, typically the taxpayers thru Medicare and Medicaid get stuck for the costs of care.
Well, now that the verdict is in, the litigation can start.
The above comments are generic in nature and do not form the basis for an attorney/client relationship. They are not legal advice. I am not your attorney. Find your own damn snake in the grass.
Jim Norton – I hope you’re never maimed for life in a train crash.
It’s more than “…..medical bills paid and a little more for my trouble”.
You have no idea what it would feel like unless you’ve been through an experience like this.
Frankly, cases like this should not go to trial. They should be negotiated outside a courtroom. Amtrak admitted its liability, seems to me that tying up the court’s time determining compensation could be done outside a courtroom.