East Palestine residents want more time and information before deciding to accept $600M settlement

abcnews.go.com:

Some East Palestine residents want more time and more information before they have to decide by a deadline this week whether to accept their share of a $600 million class-action settlement with Norfolk Southern over last year's disastrous train derailment

Some East Palestine, Ohio, residents want more time and more information before they have to decide by a deadline this week whether to accept their share of a $600 million class-action settlement with Norfolk Southern over last year's disastrous train derailment.

But it's not clear whether the judge will rule on their motion before Thursday's deadline for people who live within 20 miles (32 kilometers) of the derailment to file a claim.

Residents who live within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the Feb. 3, 2023, crash near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border also have to decide whether to accept up to $25,000 per person for personal injuries, although accepting that money will force them to give up the right to sue later if someone develops cancer or other serious illness because of the chemical exposure.

The amount residents can receive varies by how close they lived to the derailment, with people who lived within 2 miles receiving $70,000 for property damage. People who lived at the outer edge of the area might only receive a few hundred dollars.

One of the key complaints in the motion filed by attorney David Graham is that attorneys who represented residents in the lawsuit haven't disclosed any of the results of testing done around town by their own expert, Stephen Petty, who has testified in hundreds of lawsuits about contamination concerns, to determine the extent of the contamination caused when toxic chemicals spilled and burned after the derailment.

Some of the attorneys