Tacoma jury awards $8M to woman injured in 2017 Amtrak Cascades derailment
A federal jury in Tacoma has awarded $8 million in damages to a woman injured when the Amtrak Cascades 501 line derailed in 2017, spilling passenger cars onto Interstate 5, killing three people and injuring dozens.
The jury found in favor of Emily Torjusen on Monday after a four-day trial before U.S. District Judge Benjamin Settle. The jury awarded Torjusen $2.5 million for past noneconomic compensatory damages and $5.5 million for future noneconomic damages.
According to court pleadings, Torjusen was traveling south from Seattle to Vancouver to spend the Christmas holidays with her family. She was a passenger in the seventh car behind the engine on the train’s inaugural run on its new rebuilt Point Defiance Bypass route when the train derailed at high speed near DuPont, Pierce County.
The National Transportation Safety Board, which investigated the accident, said in a final report issued in 2019 that multiple failures contributed to the crash, but placed primary blame on Sound Transit, which it said had not done enough to mitigate the danger of the curve where the train derailed.
The maximum safe speed at that curve was determined to be 30 mph, but there was only a single sign warning the engineer to slow down. Investigators determined the Amtrak Cascades was traveling at 79 mph when it arrived at the curve.
According to a trial brief filed by her attorneys, Torjusen, then 20, was looking at her phone when she “felt the whole car shaking.”
“Ms. Torjusen remembers metal coming toward her and then she was knocked unconscious,” wrote attorneys Scott Levy and Anthony Petru of Oakland, California, law firm Hildebrand, McLeon & Nelson.
“When she woke up, it was pitch black and she heard people crying and
screaming,” the brief said. “Ms. Torjusen was stuck in the dirt and could not move her legs.”
In a statement issued Monday after the verdict, Levy said Torjusen’s life was “irreparably changed due to Amtrak’s negligence.”
Torjusen, who was a sophomore at the University of Washington, suffered a fractured collarbone and “major emotional and cognitive consequences,” but regained the use of her legs. She has since graduated, Levy said, but continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder and post-concussion syndrome.
“This jury verdict is an appropriate recognition of the significant psychological and cognitive injuries suffered by Emily,” he said.
Olivia Irvin, a spokesperson for the National Railroad Passenger Corp. in Oakland, said Amtrak “cannot provide comment” on the verdict.
Including Torjusen’s $8 million verdict, Amtrak has paid more than $46 million connected to the Amtrak Cascade derailment, including verdicts of $4.5 million and $17 million in 2019, $10 million in 2020, and $6.9 million in 2021.