Not my railcar, not my fault?

February 3, 2023, early evening. Norfolk Southern freight train 32N is traveling through eastern Ohio toward the Pennsylvania border. Traffic cameras at a crossing capture sparks flying from under one of the railcars. No one reacts in time. A few kilometers later, just outside the town of East Palestine, the train derails.

38 railcars end up off the tracks. 11 of them are carrying hazardous materials, including vinyl chloride—a substance used to manufacture plastic. Three days later, fearing an uncontrolled explosion, authorities decide to conduct a controlled release and burn of the gas from five tankers. A black plume of smoke rises over the town, visible for miles. Residents are evacuated.

What the NTSB found

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) determined the technical cause: an overheated axle bearing on one of the railcars. The car that triggered the derailment was carrying plastic pellets and belonged not to Norfolk Southern, but to GATX—a leasing company that owns tankers and railcars rented to freight carriers worldwide.

This is the heart of the dispute that began long after the smoke cleared.

$600 million and the question: who pays?

Norfolk Southern paid. In April 2024, the company agreed to a $600 million class-action settlement with residents and business owners in the East Palestine area—without admitting fault, but with a clear financial commitment to those affected. On top of that, there were over $100 million in prior direct payments, including $21 million that went straight to residents. The total cost of the disaster for the carrier exceeded a billion dollars.

But Norfolk Southern decided it shouldn't have to pay alone.

The company sued GATX—the owner of the railcar with the faulty bearing—and OxyVinyls, the manufacturer of the vinyl chloride carried in the five burned tankers. Norfolk Southern’s argument: since the derailment was caused by a bearing belonging to GATX and the hazardous material came from OxyVinyls, both companies shared responsibility for the safety of the transport and should contribute to the settlement costs.

GATX countered: Norfolk Southern operated the train, employed the crew, ran on its own tracks, and was responsible for inspecting and safely delivering the cargo—regardless of whose railcar broke down. The company also pointed out that the railcar might have been damaged six years earlier while sitting in floodwaters after Hurricane Harvey—and if so, the railroad should have detected the issue during its own inspections.

Three weeks of trial, one answer

OxyVinyls bowed out a week before the trial ended, reaching a confidential settlement with Norfolk Southern.

GATX saw it through to the end. The trial in federal court in Ohio, presided over by Judge Benita Y. Pearson, lasted over three weeks. On April 23, 2025, an eight-person jury delivered its verdict: Norfolk Southern is 100% liable for the settlement. GATX—0%.

A GATX spokesperson commented on the verdict as confirmation that Norfolk Southern—as the train operator, employing its own crew and running on its own tracks—bears sole responsibility for the disaster and its consequences. Norfolk Southern called the verdict disappointing, emphasizing that it had nevertheless been covering the costs associated with the disaster for two years while acknowledging its own responsibility for the accident.

The verdict had no impact on how much money the residents of East Palestine would receive—the class-action settlement remained untouched by the entire dispute. It was strictly about who would ultimately write the check.

The mechanism: the railcar isn't yours, but the train is yours

In rail transport, most freight cars—especially chemical tank cars—are not owned by the rail carriers themselves. They belong to leasing companies or the shippers themselves. The carrier picks up a third-party car at a border station, attaches it to their train, and transports it further—often without the ability to physically inspect every bearing at every interchange.

This raises the exact same type of question you already know from our Dark Stories about the MSC Flaminia: who in the chain—the owner of the infrastructure and the means of transport, the owner of the specific railcar, or the shipper of the hazardous cargo—is responsible when a component fails for which, formally, no one wants to take full responsibility?

The court and jury in Ohio provided a clear answer in this specific case: the carrier physically operating the train bears the responsibility for the safe delivery of the cargo, regardless of whose technical fault it was regarding a specific component.

What does this mean for Polish shippers and carriers?

The case concerns American law and the American railcar leasing system, but the mechanism has a direct translation to European rail transport, where the leasing of tank cars and specialized wagons is just as common.

First: liability agreements between parties do not always align with how a court will distribute liability. Norfolk Southern was convinced that shared responsibility for the technical condition of the railcar would translate into shared financial liability. The jury decided otherwise.

Second: the operator of the means of transport is responsible for its technical condition in practice, even if they are not formally the owner. If your company uses leased tank cars, trailers, or specialized containers, you—not the lessor—may be held liable for a failure.

Third: documentation of inspections and the service history of a railcar or trailer is your shield in such a dispute—and its absence works exactly the opposite way. It is the documentation and maintenance schedule that determine who will bear the costs when something goes wrong.

Fourth: a settlement with one party to a dispute (as in the case of OxyVinyls) does not end the matter for the other participants in the chain. Each link—shipper, railcar owner, carrier—can be held accountable separately, with a separate outcome.

The Moral

No one in this story questioned the technical cause of the derailment—the bearing did indeed overheat. The dispute was about something else: the fact that being right about the cause of a failure does not automatically mean sharing the bill for its consequences. In rail transport, just as in maritime, the chain of liability is often longer than the chain of railcars—and every link in it defends its own narrow definition of what it is responsible for.

Our previous publications from the "Dark Stories" series

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Sources

Factual and legal status as of July 2026. The settlement with OxyVinyls is confidential; its terms have not been publicly disclosed.

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Not my railcar, not my fault? - Dark Stories #9