Metrolink Agrees to $30 Million Settlement over Glendale Train Derailment

October 14, 2009

Glendale - Metrolink has agreed to pay $30 million to settle about 90 percent of the personal injury and wrongful death lawsuits over the deadly commuter train accident in Glendale last 2005, Jerome Singler, the lead attorney of the victims announced.

The 2005 train derailment was caused by a suicidal man who parked his gasoline-drenched Jeep Cherokee on the railroad tracks.

However, the man, Juan Manuel Alvarez, changed his mind and left the jeep on the tracks.

He has since been sentenced to 11 consecutive life prison terms.

The lawsuit against Metrolink alleged that the train engineer testified that he saw this jeep a quarter of a mile before he struck it.

In his testimony, he said that he was obliged to put the train into emergency once he saw the jeeps outline, but he never did.

Singler argued that although the collision could not have been avoided even if the train was put into emergency, it could have prevented the derailment that caused scores of injuries and deaths.

Metrolink declined to give comment, but it was reported that only two more wrongful death lawsuits are left unsettled.