EAST PALESTINE — Norfolk Southern’s decision to vent and burn five tank cars of vinyl chloride following the 2023 train derailment is the center of the most recent lawsuit filed against the railroad by residents who lived through the rail disaster.

On Wednesday, a lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Illinois was transferred to Ohio’s Northeast Court in Youngstown and accuses Norfolk Southern of “compounding the derailment’s harm” and “causing widespread contamination” when it chose to “intentionally blow holes in each of the derailed cars containing vinyl chloride to drain the chemical into a trench where flares would then ignite and burn the vinyl chloride away.”

The lawsuit, filed by eight residents who opted out of last year’s $600 million class action settlement with Norfolk Southern, maintains that the railroad “failed to investigate possible alternatives to the controlled burn, instead choosing to pursue the course that would allow the railroad to re-open as quickly as possible, regardless of the consequences to plaintiffs and the East Palestine community.”

The decision to vent and burn over 1 million pounds of vinyl chloride over the village has been both a controversy and a point of contention between the railroad and the communities the resulting toxic plume traveled over. Norfolk Southern has defended itself saying it had no choice but to do so as the compromised tank cars were at a risk of rupturing. Had the tanks ruptured, a Boiling Liquid Expanding Vapor Explosion, known as a BLEVE, would have caused catastrophic damage and potentially deaths, but the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) concluded in its investigation that the vent and burn was unnecessary. The NTSB determined that temperatures in the tank cars were cooling and thus polymerization which was needed for the runaway reaction and violent explosion was not occurring. The NTSB also reported that dropping temperatures in the tanks were never relayed to incident commander Fire Chief Keith Drabick. Drabick ultimately made the decision to empty and then burn off the contents of the tank car but did so without complete information the NTSB said the railroad withheld.

Aside from the vinyl chloride itself and the other toxic chemicals spilled during the derailment, the lawsuit said the fires that burned before and during the vent-and-burn created dangerous dioxin. As a result, “the plaintiffs have suffered catastrophic losses from the derailment and burn.”

The plaintiffs — Rebecca Duncan, Jeffrey Hays, Michelle Hays, Bryan McCall, Mary Jo Mercer, Helen Parker and Morgan Parker — accuse Norfolk Southern of negligence, strict liability, private nuisance, trespass, willful and wanton conduct.

“The resulting fire and release of toxic chemicals into the air, soil, and water have caused, and will continue to cause, direct and substantial damages to plaintiffs,” the lawsuit charges.

Judge Benita Pearson, who presided over the class action settlement, has been assigned the case.

selverd@mojonews.com