Amtrak Lawsuit: Derailments, Liability Cap, and Major Verdicts

An Amtrak lawsuit is possible in most situations where a private railroad could be sued, because Amtrak’s charter contains a “sue-and-be-sued” clause and the Supreme Court has held that Amtrak cannot claim the federal government’s sovereign immunity. What complicates these cases is everything layered on top: a Federal Tort Claims Act filing process, a congressional cap on total payouts per incident, and, since 2019, a mandatory arbitration clause buried in ticket terms that pushes most passenger disputes out of court entirely.

Can You Sue Amtrak?

Yes. Although Amtrak’s authorizing statute calls the corporation “not an agency or establishment of the United States Government,”¹ that label works against Amtrak when it comes to immunity. The Supreme Court’s 2019 decision in Thacker v. Tennessee Valley Authority confirmed that when a government corporation is “launched into the commercial world” with a sue-and-be-sued clause, it is broadly liable for its torts, much like a private company.²

Claims against Amtrak generally proceed under the Federal Tort Claims Act. A claimant must submit a written administrative claim within two years of the injury and give the government at least six months to investigate before filing suit in federal court. If the claim is denied, the claimant has six months from the denial to sue, whether or not the original two-year window has closed.³

Missing either deadline usually ends the case before it starts, so injured passengers and their families should contact counsel well inside the two-year window.

The Federal Cap on Amtrak Payouts

Every Amtrak lawsuit arising out of a single incident competes for a fixed pool of money. The Amtrak Reform and Accountability Act of 1997 originally set the ceiling at $200 million per incident.⁴ After the 2015 Philadelphia derailment, Congress raised the cap to $295 million.⁵ A later adjustment brought it to $323 million.⁶

Federal law requires Congress to recalculate the cap every five years. A new adjustment was pending as of mid-2026, with industry advocates expecting a rise to roughly $400 million.⁷

The Mandatory Arbitration Clause on Amtrak Tickets

In January 2019, Amtrak added a mandatory arbitration provision to its ticket purchasing terms. Buying a ticket now generally requires the passenger to resolve disputes in private arbitration rather than court, and the clause bars class actions. Its scope is unusually broad, covering personal injury, wrongful death, gross negligence, discrimination, and failure to accommodate disabilities.⁸ Amtrak itself described the clause as “intended to be as broad as legally possible,” reaching family members, minor passengers, and colleagues traveling on the same reservation.⁹

Mandatory arbitration is unlawful for airlines but remains common in other transportation sectors, including cruise lines and bus companies.¹⁰

The clause has survived court challenge so far. In Weissman v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, advocacy group Public Citizen argued the provision was unconstitutional and exceeded Amtrak’s delegated authority. In December 2021, the D.C. Circuit dismissed the case for lack of standing without ruling on the merits, because the plaintiffs had no active dispute with Amtrak.¹¹

Legislative efforts to ban the clause have stalled. The U.S. House passed a provision within the 2020 Moving Forward Act that would have prohibited forced arbitration by Amtrak, but the bill died in the Senate.⁹ Senator Richard Blumenthal reintroduced the Ending Passenger Rail Forced Arbitration Act in May 2026 with ten cosponsors, though it had not advanced beyond committee referral as of mid-2026.¹²

Major Amtrak Derailment Lawsuits

Philadelphia (2015)

On May 12, 2015, Amtrak Train 188 derailed in Philadelphia’s Frankford neighborhood after engineer Brandon Bostian accelerated into a 50 mph curve at 106 mph. Eight people were killed and more than 200 injured.¹³

More than 125 lawsuits followed. In October 2016, a federal judge approved a $265 million settlement fund — $30 million below the liability cap then in effect — open to all victims, including those who had not yet sued. Individual award notifications went out by June 2017.¹³ Congress raised the overall cap from $200 million to $295 million in response.¹⁴

DuPont, Washington (2017)

On December 18, 2017, an Amtrak Cascades train derailed on its first paid run of a new Tacoma-to-Portland route, traveling nearly 80 mph on a 30 mph curve. Three people were killed and dozens injured when cars plunged onto Interstate 5. The NTSB blamed the engineer for losing track of his location and criticized Amtrak for “extremely lax safety oversight, unclear responsibility, and poor training,” with the agency’s vice chairman calling the failures “Titanic-like complacency.”¹⁵

Recoveries were substantial. One firm alone obtained $56.78 million in settlements in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington, covering several injured adults, minors, and one wrongful death claim.¹⁶ Separate jury trials awarded nearly $17 million to three plaintiffs and $4.5 million to a woman who suffered a fractured spine and broken pelvis.¹⁵

Aaron v. Amtrak: A $158 Million Verdict, Then Reversal

On January 14, 2022, 30-year-old construction worker Richie Terrell Aaron Jr. was shot five times in the back by another passenger, Marquise Webb, while riding an Amtrak train near Lee’s Summit, Missouri. According to the lawsuit filed by his widow, Breayonna Aaron, roughly 35 minutes passed between the shooting and the train reaching the next station, and Aaron bled to death during that time.¹⁷

The suit alleged that conductors had flagged Webb before the shooting — he had bought two tickets, had bloodshot eyes, and appeared impaired — but failed to search his belongings or detain him. It also claimed staff ignored passengers’ pleas for help and refused to stop the train or contact emergency services.¹⁷

After an eight-day trial in January 2024, a jury assigned 90% fault to Amtrak and 10% to Webb, awarding $8.8 million in compensatory damages and $150 million in punitive damages. The trial court reduced the punitive award to $35.2 million on due-process grounds but otherwise let the verdict stand.¹⁸

On December 31, 2025, the Eighth Circuit reversed the verdict entirely, ruling that the evidence was insufficient to establish that the shooting was foreseeable or that Amtrak’s delayed response caused the death, and directed entry of judgment for Amtrak.¹⁹ Rehearing was denied in February 2026, and the family obtained a Supreme Court extension to file a certiorari petition by July 2, 2026.¹⁸

DOJ v. Norfolk Southern: Freight Priority Enforcement

Nearly three-quarters of Amtrak’s trains run on tracks owned by private freight railroads, and federal law since 1973 requires those carriers to give passenger trains priority. Enforcement has been rare. The Department of Justice used its authority only once before 2024, in a 1979 case against Southern Pacific.²⁰

In 2023, none of Amtrak’s 15 long-distance routes met the federal 80% on-time standard, and the Crescent between New York and New Orleans was particularly bad: southbound trains arrived on time just 24% of the time.²¹

On July 30, 2024, the DOJ sued Norfolk Southern in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging its dispatchers routinely prioritized freight over Amtrak on the 1,140 miles of Crescent route it controls.²¹ On September 9, 2025, the DOJ announced a settlement requiring Norfolk Southern to give all Amtrak trains “highest priority,” train its employees, require supervisor approval for any non-emergency dispatching decision that does not favor Amtrak, and turn over Crescent delay records. Norfolk Southern’s Vice President of Compliance must certify annually that the company is meeting these obligations. There were no monetary penalties or admission of liability. Delay minutes on the Crescent route dropped 53% between 2024 and 2025.²²

Separately, the Surface Transportation Board opened its first-ever investigation into Amtrak on-time performance in July 2023, targeting the Sunset Limited between New Orleans and Los Angeles.²³ It resolved in August 2025 with a settlement in which Union Pacific committed to improving on-time performance and training employees on federal-law obligations.²⁴

Discrimination and Accessibility Cases

Campbell and Williams: Race Discrimination

In November 1998, a group of African American Amtrak employees, former employees, and applicants filed Campbell et al. v. Amtrak in the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia, alleging racial discrimination in hiring, promotion, and discipline, and a hostile work environment, under Title VII and the Civil Rights Act of 1866. The plaintiffs sought to represent more than 11,000 African American unionized Amtrak workers.²⁵

Private mediation between 2012 and 2013 failed. In April 2018, the court denied class certification and granted Amtrak partial summary judgment on the disparate-impact claims.²⁵ In 2021, about 275 individuals who would have been part of the Campbell classes filed a separate individual-plaintiff suit, Williams et al. v. Amtrak, in the same court. A Third Amended Complaint was filed in 2023 on behalf of roughly 154 plaintiffs, and the case remained active as of late 2023, with a motion to dismiss fully briefed.²⁶

ADA Accessibility

On December 2, 2020, the DOJ settled a civil action alleging that Amtrak violated Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act by failing to make its intercity rail stations accessible. Amtrak had missed the congressionally mandated compliance deadline of July 26, 2010, by a decade.²⁷

Under the ten-year agreement, Amtrak committed to designing at least 135 stations to be accessible, completing construction at 90 stations, and having at least 45 more under construction. Once external approvals are obtained for a given project, Amtrak has 36 months to finish the work. The agreement also requires ADA training for all relevant employees, a formal complaint process, and a dedicated Office of the Vice President of Stations, Properties and Accessibility.²⁷ Amtrak established a $2.25 million fund to compensate individuals with mobility impairments affected by accessibility problems at 78 specific stations.²⁸

Funding has grown since the settlement. Congress directed at least $50 million per year toward Amtrak accessibility improvements, later raised to $75 million per year in 2021, and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act provided more; Amtrak forecast over $209 million in ADA project spending in fiscal year 2025.²⁹

Recent Commercial Disputes

Washington Union Station Eminent Domain

In April 2022, Amtrak filed an eminent domain lawsuit to acquire the leasehold interest in Washington, D.C.’s Union Station from Rexmark Holdings, which had controlled most customer-facing areas. In the summer of 2024, the U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia granted Amtrak the right to take control of the sublease.³⁰

The parties settled in February 2025, with Amtrak agreeing to pay $505 million for the leasehold, more than double what the railroad had initially hoped to pay, according to the Washington Post.³¹ U.S. District Judge Amit Mehta approved the settlement, and the case closed on March 7, 2025. Amtrak now manages day-to-day operations of the 117-year-old station, including safety, security, maintenance, and retail leasing.³⁰

Amtrak v. Metro-North

On April 22, 2026, Amtrak sued the Metro-North Commuter Railroad in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, seeking a preliminary injunction to compel Metro-North to allow non-revenue train movements on its Hudson and New Haven lines. Amtrak alleged that starting in March 2026, Metro-North had “systematically denied” eight access requests, blocking track geometry inspections, equipment repositioning, and commissioning runs for the new NextGen Acela trains.³²

Metro-North and the MTA cited safety concerns, alleging that Amtrak’s Acela equipment had destroyed overhead wires on the New Haven Line in January 2026 and caused a fire at Penn Station in May 2026 that forced Long Island Rail Road to suspend service.³³ Judge Jed Rakoff denied Amtrak’s injunction request on May 22, 2026, and the case closed on June 3, 2026.³⁴ The dispute has raised concerns about delays in the full rollout of Amtrak’s new Acela fleet.³⁵

1
Justia. Lebron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, 513 U.S. 374
2
SCOTUSblog. Opinion Analysis: When the Federal Government Acts as a Commercial Enterprise, the Courthouse Doors Open Wider
3
Avvo. Is There a Statute of Limitations for Amtrak Claims
4
Smith Law Center. Amtrak Crashes
5
Rutberg Breslow. Amtrak Liability for Train Accident Deaths
6
Streetsblog USA. This Doomsday Law Could Stop Trains Across America in a Matter of Weeks
7
Planetizen. Amtrak Cannot Force Passengers to Agree to Arbitration, Lawsuit Says
9
Center for Justice and Democracy. Legislative Memo on Amtrak Forced Arbitration
10
Law Offices of Michael Waks. New Amtrak Ticket Rule Prevents Injured Passengers From Suing
11
Justia. Weissman v. National Railroad Passenger Corp., No. 20-7081
12
Congress.gov. S.4572, Ending Passenger Rail Forced Arbitration Act
13
NPR. Amtrak Reaches $265 Million Settlement Over Deadly Philadelphia Crash
14
Politico. Amtrak Crash Sue
15
KING 5. Lawsuit Over Fatal Amtrak Derailment
16
Clifford Law Offices. Clifford Law Offices Obtains $56.78 Million in Settlements in Seattle Amtrak Derailment
17
The Witherspoon Law Group. Wife, Attorney for Family of Man Murdered on Amtrak Train
18
U.S. Supreme Court. Breayonna Aaron, Application for Extension of Time to File Cert Petition
19
U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit. Aaron v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, No. 24-2654
20
Trains Magazine. Justice Department, Norfolk Southern Settle Lawsuit Over Amtrak’s Crescent
21
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Files Complaint Against Norfolk Southern to Stop Amtrak Passenger Train Delays
22
U.S. Department of Justice. Norfolk Southern Agrees to Give Amtrak Trains Highest Priority Over Freight Trains
23
Surface Transportation Board. STB Opens Investigation Into Sunset Limited On-Time Performance
24
Amtrak Media. Amtrak, Union Pacific Joint Statement
25
GovInfo. Campbell et al. v. National Railroad Passenger Corporation, Civil Action No. 99-2979
26
Wiggins Childs Pantazis Fisher Goldfarb. Amtrak Litigation Updates
27
U.S. Department of Justice. Justice Department Settles With Amtrak to Resolve Disability Discrimination Across Its Intercity Rail System
28
U.S. Department of Justice, ADA.gov. Amtrak Settlement Agreement
29
Amtrak. ADA Progress Report
30
Amtrak Media. Amtrak and Rexmark Announce Resolution of Legal Claims for Washington Union Station
31
Washington Post. Amtrak Union Station Deal
32
Railway Age. Amtrak, New York MTA in Court Faceoff
33
Streetsblog. Amtrak Fails to Regain Metro-North Rail Access After Lawsuit
34
PACER Monitor. National Railroad Passenger Corporation (Amtrak) v. Metro-North Commuter Railroad Company
35
E&E News. Amtrak Sues MTA Over Track Access for Acela Tests