Washington-The U.S. Supreme Court on May 18 said it will not block the final lawsuits filed by residents of Minot, N.D., against Canadian Pacific Railway over the January 2002 train derailment that released a cloud of anhydrous ammonia from a ruptured tank car, killing one resident and sending others to the hospital for eye and lung problems. In 2006, a U.S. district judge ruled that federal law protected Canadian Pacific from claims stemming from the derailment, but a St. Louis-based 8th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the claims could be pursued after Congress changed the law that same year. Since the accident, several lawsuits against the railroad were decided in a Minnesota court (GM Feb. 20, 2006), and a class-action suit against the railroad (GM May 16, 2005) was also settled. Most individual lawsuits against the railroad have been settled out of court, but several are still to be decided.
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