The Union Pacific Railroad has agreed to pay $102 million for the role of its employees in starting a wildfire in 2000.
A fire about 100 miles northeast of Sacramento started in August 2000 and burned more than 52,000 acres in the Plumas and Lassen national forests. It was contained after three weeks at a cost of $22 million. It later was determined that sparks from welders repairing tracks set it off. Railroad employees thought they had extinguished the sparks that were burning alongside the tracks. Union Pacific said a passing train probably blew them back to life. [In another story about this, I read that the Union Pacific workers were accused of neglecting safety precautions, by failing to use spark shields and clearing the area of flammable material.]
U.S. District Judge Frank C. Damrell Jr. had said the federal government could seek damages far beyond the previous legal benchmarks – lost market value of burned trees and the cost of fighting the fire.
He ruled that a jury also could consider the loss of public recreation, scenery and wildlife, as well as wilderness areas with old-growth trees that never would have been logged for sale.
That would allow the government to seek significantly higher damages. In this case, the government estimated that could be as high as $190 million, a figure the railroad was disputing, according to court records.
That’s a tough one. Under our legal scheme, it’s not that hard to find yourself liable for damages that far exceed the culpability of your behavior. In other words, your actions are only a little wrong, but the damages caused by that little wrong are enormous. So, a little carelessness can lead to millions of dollars in liability. In this case, the carelessness was in service of a company with deep pockets and substantial amounts of insurance. So, Union Pacific can pay the damages and get on with its corporate life. Mere mortals, however, can find themselves wiped out.
Leave a Reply