People who lived near the disastrous East Palestine derailment last year should still be able to receive personal injury payments even while the bulk of their $600 million class action settlement with Norfolk Southern railroad remains on hold during an appeal.
A spokesperson for the attorneys who represented residents said provisions of the deal will allow those personal injury payments to go forward while an appeal challenging whether the settlement is adequate and fair moves forward. It's not clear how much of the settlement fund will be used up by those payments because the attorneys haven't provided those details. A federal judge approved the settlement last month.
The lawyers haven't provided any breakdown of how many of the roughly 55,000 claims they received are for injuries and how many are for property damage, nor have they said how much each person will receive. Only 370 households and 47 businesses opted out of the deal.
Residents who lived within 10 miles (16 kilometers) of the train crash that happened near the Ohio-Pennsylvania border in February 2023 were eligible to receive up to $25,000 apiece as long as they gave up the right to sue later if someone develops cancer or any other serious health condition.
The property damage portion of the settlement provides larger payments of up to $70,000 per household for those living within two miles (3.2 kilometers) of the derailment, with payments decreasing the further away people lived, up to 20 miles (32 kilometers) out.
About the only payment that is relatively certain is the $162 million in legal fees the judge approved as part of the settlement. That won't change unless the deal is overturned on appeal.
Residents don't really know exactly how much they will receive. Their claims are still being reviewed, and any settlement they get will be reduced by the amount of aid they accepted after the derailment when Norfolk Southern paid to relocate families and compensate some people for lost wages and damaged belongings. Plus, some lawyers who aren't representing the overall class are still demanding to collect a percentage of any settlement some residents receive.
At least $18 million has been consumed by administrative expenses, though the class lawyers now say that total will grow by at least $825,000 because the claims administrator will have to handle the personal injury payments separately from the property payments.
The initial appeal notice filed by the Rev. Joseph Sheely in the case was divisive in East Palestine, with some residents upset that their settlement checks will be delayed making threats. Then Sheely came forward publicly and said in interviews that he wanted no part in the appeal even though he was one of the small group of residents who questioned the deal this summer, casting doubt about the future of the appeal.
On Tuesday, four other area residents came forward and put their names on a notice saying they intend to appeal. They might face also complaints from their neighbors that they are just being greedy, but their lawyer, David Graham, said they are willing to take the heat to help ensure the deal is fair and addresses the town's needs.
“We’ve got good people who have stepped forward in the face of adversity and persecution that they know they’re going to likely receive. And they stepped up to file this appeal," Graham said.
The plaintiffs' lawyers filed a motion Monday asking the judge to order Sheely to post an $850,000 bond before his appeal could move forward. That may be moot now that the notice of additional appeals has been filed, but it's not clear whether the lawyers will ask all of the appellants to post a bond.
Those who object to the deal say they felt rushed to accept it without ever receiving a full accounting of the contamination they were exposed to when tank cars full of hazardous chemicals spilled their contents or when officials decided to needlessly blow open five tank cars of vinyl chloride and burn that plastic ingredient. Some doubt the Environmental Protection Agency's assurances that their town is safe, and the plaintiffs' attorneys never disclosed what their own expert discovered when he tested for dioxins and other dangerous chemicals around East Palestine.
The plaintiffs' lawyers reiterated in their motion Monday that even if residents feel like they have inadequate information about the dangers they face because of questions about the EPA response or the testing data the agency reports or the cleanup, they should be able to trust the lawyers because of the research they did and the experts they consulted.
Graham said that the personal injury payment in particular seems woefully inadequate. He said residents will quickly rack up medical bills bigger than that payment if they develop any kind of serious health problems.
The railroad has agreed in a separate federal settlement with the government to pay $25 million for 20 years of medical exams for residents, but that did didn't include any money for treatment of any illnesses that develop. That deal hasn't yet received final approval.
FILE - This photo taken with a drone shows portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed in East Palestine, Ohio, Feb. 4, 2023. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — Donald Trump has had as many as seven private phone calls with Vladimir Putin since leaving office and secretly sent the Russian president COVID-19 test machines during the height of the pandemic, Bob Woodward reported in his new book, “War."
The revelations were made in the famed Watergate reporter's latest book, which also details President Joe Biden's frustrations with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman 's assortment of burner phones. The Associated Press obtained an early copy of the book, which is due out next week.
Steven Cheung, Trump's communications director, denied the accounts in the book. “None of these made up stories by Bob Woodward are true and are the work of a truly demented and deranged man who suffers from a debilitating case of Trump Derangement Syndrome,” Cheung said in a statement.
Trump had previously spoken to Woodward for the journalist's 2021 book, “Rage.” Trump later sued over it, claiming Woodward never had permission to publicly release recordings of their interviews for the book. The publisher and Woodward denied his allegations.
Here is more from the new book:
Woodward reports that Trump asked an aide to leave his office at his Florida resort, Mar-a-Lago, so that the former president could have a private call with Putin in early 2024. The aide, whom Woodward doesn’t name, said there have been multiple calls between Trump and Putin since Trump left office, perhaps as many as seven, according to the book.
Trump's relationship with Putin has been scrutinized since his 2016 campaign for president, when he memorably called on Russia to find and make public missing emails deleted by Hillary Clinton, his Democratic opponent. “Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,” he said.
U.S. intelligence agencies later determined that Russia had meddled in the 2016 election to help Trump, though an investigation by special counsel Robert Mueller found no conspiracy between the Trump team and Russia. In 2018, Trump publicly questioned that finding following an in-person meeting with Putin in Helsinki.
In recent years, Trump has criticized U.S. support for Ukraine as it fights off Russia’s invasion. He has said Ukraine should have made concessions to Putin before Russia invaded in 2022. He also previously touted his good relationship with Putin and called the Russian leader “pretty smart” for invading Ukraine.
Woodward reports that Trump sent Putin COVID-19 test machines for his personal use as the virus began spreading in 2020.
Putin told Trump not to tell anyone because people would be mad at Trump over it, but Trump said he didn’t care if anyone knew, according to the book. Trump ended up agreeing not to tell anyone.
The book doesn’t specify when the machines were sent but describes it as being when the virus spread rapidly through Russia. It was previously reported by The Associated Press and other agencies that Trump’s administration in May 2020 sent ventilators and other equipment to several countries, including Russia.
Vice President Kamala Harris, in an interview Tuesday with radio host Howard Stern, accused Trump of giving the machines to a “murderous dictator” at a time when “everyone was scrambling" to get tests.
“This person who wants to be president again, who secretly is helping out an an adversary while the American people are dying by the hundreds every day," said Harris, the Democratic presidential candidate.
The book also details Biden’s complicated relationship with Netanyahu as well as private moments when the president has been fed up with him over the Israel-Hamas war.
Biden’s “frustrations and distrust” of Netanyahu “erupted” this past spring, Woodward writes. The president privately unleashed a profanity-laden tirade, calling him a “son of a bitch” and a “bad f——— guy," according to the book. Biden said he felt, in Woodward’s accounting, that Netanyahu “had been lying to him regularly.” With Netanyahu “continuing to say he was going to kill every last member of Hamas.” Woodward wrote, “Biden had told him that was impossible, threatening both privately and publicly to withhold offensive U.S. weapons shipment.”
Biden and Netanyahu have long been acquainted, although their relationship has not been known to be close or overly friendly. Last week, Biden said he didn’t know whether the Israeli leader was holding up a Mideast peace deal in order to influence the outcome of the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Asked about the book's reporting, White House spokesperson Emilie Simons told reporters Tuesday that “The commitment that we have to the state of Israel is ironclad.”
Simons, when pressed on the details, said she wouldn't comment on every anecdote that may come out in reporting. She added of Biden and Netanyahu: “They have a long-term relationship. They have a very honest and direct relationship, and I don’t have a comment on those specific anecdotes.”
The book details Biden’s criticism late last year of President Barack Obama’s handling of Putin’s earlier invasion of Ukraine, taking Crimea and a section of the Donbas in 2014, when Biden was serving as the Democrat’s vice president.
“They f----- up in 2014,” Woodward wrote that Biden said to a close friend in December, blaming the lack of action for Putin’s actions in Ukraine. “Barack never took Putin seriously.”
Biden was angry while speaking to the friend and said they “never should have let Putin just walk in there” in 2014 and that the U.S. “did nothing.”
Woodward reports Biden was privately furious with Attorney General Merrick Garland for appointing a special counsel to investigate Biden’s son Hunter in a tax-and-gun prosecution.
“Should never have picked Garland,” Biden told an associate, according to Woodward. The journalist did not name the associate.
Hunter Biden was convicted in June on federal gun charges and faces sentencing in federal court in Delaware in December. He pleaded guilty to federal tax charges in California and is also set to be sentenced in that case in December.
One of Trump’s longest-term allies, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, blamed Trump’s ongoing false claims that the 2020 election was rigged to a cult of personality in which the former president’s ensconcement at Mar-a-Lago and circle of aides and advisers “constantly feed this narrative,” according to the book.
The weekend after Russia invaded Ukraine, Graham was with Trump at Mar-a-Lago, which the senator characterized as “a little bit like going to North Korea.” Graham added that “everybody stands up and claps every time Trump comes in.”
On politics, Woodward wrote that Graham’s counsel was part of what persuaded Trump to run again for the presidency.
In March, during one of his many visits to the Middle East since Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, Graham told Woodward that he had been meeting with the Saudi crown prince when Graham suggested they call Trump. From “a bag containing about 50 burner phones,” Prince Mohammed “pulled out one labeled ‘TRUMP 45.’” On another trip, Woodward wrote, the Saudi leader retrieved another burner phone, "this time labeled JAKE SULLIVAN ” when the men called Biden’s national security adviser.
Price reported from New York. Associated Press writers Hillel Italie in New York, Eric Tucker in Washington and Aamer Madhani aboard Air Force One contributed to this report.
FILE - In this April 29, 2017, file photo journalist Bob Woodward sits at the head table during the White House Correspondents' Dinner in Washington. (AP Photo/Cliff Owen, File)
Russian President Vladimir Putin attends an extended meeting during the summit of the heads of state of the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) at the Kremlin in Moscow, Russia, Tuesday, Oct. 8, 2024. (Sergei Ilnitsky/Pool Photo via AP)
Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump speaks at an event marking one year since the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, Monday, Oct. 7, 2024, in Miami. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
