Metrolink Settles Suits for $30 Million

Victims of the 2005 Metrolink disaster may finally be able to get some closure.

Most of the pending lawsuits stemming from the train crash at the Glendale-Los Angeles border have settled for $30 million, an attorney for many of the plaintiffs said Wednesday.

Among the resolved cases was a wrongful death suit filed against Metrolink on behalf of the widow of Los Angeles County sheriff's Deputy James Tutino, who was killed in the Jan. 26, 2005, derailment, lawyer Jerome Ringler said.

"She's extremely pleased with the settlement," Ringler said of Rita Kay Tutino.

Her husband was a 23-year law enforcement veteran who occasionally used the rail to get to work at the Men's Central Jail in downtown Los Angeles. The 47-year-old Simi Valley resident was one of 11 Metrolink riders to die in the crash, which left more than 180 others injured.

At the time, it was the deadliest crash on a U.S. railroad since 1999, and in the history of Metrolink, which began service in 1992.

The former Compton resident who caused the derailment was sentenced in August 2008 to 11 consecutive life prison terms.

Juan Manuel Alvarez testified that he meant to commit suicide by parking his green Jeep on the tracks south of Chevy Chase Drive in Glendale about 6 a.m., but changed his mind and couldn't get the SUV off the tracks so abandoned the vehicle.

He told jurors that it never crossed his mind that anyone aboard the train would be hurt. But prosecutors countered that the then-26-year-old former construction worker and father of two intended to cause a catastrophe to get his estranged wife's attention.

"The engineer actually saw this Jeep about a quarter-mile before he struck it, and the testimony of the engineer was that at the time he saw the outline of the Jeep, he was obligated to put his train into emergency," Ringler told KNX Newsradio. "He never did."

Ringler argued that if the engineer had put train into emergency mode, it still would have hit the Jeep but would not have derailed, causing the scores of injuries and deaths.

Metrolink spokesman Francisco Oaxaca did not immediately return a call for comment.

Ringler said many of the non-fatal injury cases against Metrolink were settled early on, but that momentum to resolve the larger suits such as Tutino's grew in the last three months as trial of her case neared.

Only two wrongful death suits remain unsettled, Ringler said.

Ringler has secured several multimillion-dollar awards in railroad litigation. Most recently, he negotiated an $8.5 million settlement for a Metrolink conductor injured in an April 2002 crash in Orange County.

Patrick Phillips of Riverside suffered minor head injuries when a Burlington Northern freight train crashed into a Metrolink commuter train in Placentia. In his lawsuit, he claimed the trauma led him to begin abusing alcohol again.

Burlington Northern Santa Fe Railway agreed to settle the case on Feb. 2, one week before going to trial in Orange County Superior Court.

Ringler also represented Pamela Macek of Riverside, who won a roughly $9 million jury verdict for injuries she suffered in the same Metrolink crash.
 

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