Few residents opt out of $600 million class action settlement in East Palestine, Ohio, derailment

abcnews.go.com:

Lawyers say few people ultimately opted out of the $600 million class action settlement Norfolk Southern offered to people affected by last year's disastrous East Palestine train derailment despite the questions residents raised about the deal

Few people ultimately opted out of the $600 million class action settlement Norfolk Southern offered to people affected by last year's disastrous East Palestine train derailment despite the questions residents raised about the deal, lawyers said.

The plaintiffs' attorneys said only 22 of the nearly 2,000 households in the small Ohio town where the derailment happened in February 2023 opted out of the deal before the July 1 deadline. In total, only 173 of the more than 190,000 households in the 20-mile (32.2-kilometer) area around the derailment covered by the deal had decided not to accept it as of Monday's filing.

The train crash spilled an assortment of hazardous chemicals from tank cars that ruptured, and days after the derailment, officials decided to blow open five tank cars and burn the vinyl chloride inside because they worried the cars might explode. The National Transportation Safety Board has said that vent and burn procedure was likely unnecessary but the officials who made that call didn't have all the information they needed.

A federal judge has given the deal preliminary approval, but a hearing will be held in late September to determine if the deal should go through. Separately, Norfolk Southern agreed to pay a $15 million fine and make changes to its operation as part of a federal settlement.

The lawyers said in a statement Tuesday that “the community's response to the settlement has been overwhelmingly positive" and thousands of claims have already been submitted.