FILE - Portions of a Norfolk Southern freight train that derailed the night before burn in East Palestine, Ohio, Feb. 4, 2023. Norfolk Southern railroad announced on Tuesday, Dec. 5, plans to stop paying relocation aid to people displaced by the derailment right after the one-year anniversary of the crash. Railroad officials reiterated their long-term commitment to helping the town of East Palestine and the surrounding area recover. (AP Photo/Gene J. Puskar, File)

YOUNGSTOWN — A civil trial began Monday in U.S. District Court to determine whether two companies should share the blame with Norfolk Southern for the Feb. 3, 2023, Norfolk Southern train derailment in East Palestine.

Judge Benita Y. Pearson is presiding over the trial.

Norfolk Southern reached a $600 million class action settlement last April with individuals adversely affected by the derailment. As part of the settlement, class-action members agreed to release certain claims against Norfolk Southern; GATX, the owner of the rail tank car that failed; and OxyVinyls, the company whose chemicals were vented and burned a couple days after the derailment.

Norfolk Southern wants the latter two companies to help foot the bill for the settlement, which Norfolk Southern is so far on the hook to pay alone.

Norfolk Southern attorney Brittany Amadi said in opening statements in the trial Tuesday that Norfolk Southern is seeking a “contribution” from GATX and OxyVinyls for their role in the derailment and aftermath.

The jury will decide whether to award that contribution to Norfolk Southern. The trial is expected to take several weeks. The opening statements came from transcripts of the trial released by the court.

Amadi said the derailment occurred because a rail car owned by GATX “had a damaged … roller bearing that is used to hold the wheels of the car in place.”

There is no dispute that the roller bearing “resulted in the derailment” and that the derailment of that car “resulted in the derailment of an additional 37 cars behind it,” she said.

She argued that the bearing wore out prematurely because it was parked in Texas in August of 2017 at the time of Hurricane Harvey, and the flood waters damaged the bearing. She also argued that GATX did not do what it should have to ensure that such bearings were being inspected and replaced.

As for OxyVinyls, it manufactures chemicals such as vinyl chloride monomer, or VCM, which is “extremely volatile, a hazardous chemical,” Amadi said. Five cars containing vinyl chloride monomer derailed, “four of them close together” and “in the midst of several pools of fire” after the derailment. The fifth car was a little further back in the train, she said.

As Norfolk Southern and other officials considered what to do about the vinyl chloride cars, they turned to a document provided by OxyVinyls called a safety data sheet, but the document was “flat wrong,” she said. OxyVinyls also “refused to meaningfully participate in emergency response efforts after the derailment,” she stated, according to the transcript.

Attorney Carrie Karis, who represents GATX, said in her opening statement that Norfolk Southern never asked whether the railcar that had the bearing problem was actually in high water, but GATX asked that question, and the answer was no. Photographs and records will show that, Karis said. “Our rail yard did not submerge,” and “nothing happened” to the railcar in question, Karis said.

Norfolk Southern has one person “sitting for 12 hours, 19,000 miles of track” that the person is “supposed to be monitoring,” Karis said of the system to detect heat or other issues that can indicate a train malfunction. That is 150 trains at once, Karis said.

The attorney said alerts were going off that night for issues involving six trains over about 70 minutes — 7:21 p.m., 7:36 p.m., 8:13 p.m. in Salem; 8:18 p.m. in Tennessee, 7:55 p.m., 8:30 p.m. The train derailed in East Palestine at 8:52 p.m.

Attorney Kim Herlihy, who represents OxyVinyls, said in her opening statement that OxyVinyls was at the scene of the derailment and told Norfolk Southern that the explosion from polymerization that Norfolk Southern feared was not happening and “could not” happen.

But the people who decided to vent and burn the vinyl chloride “didn’t know anything about Oxy’s advice, Herlihy said. “That was filtered out and never shared up the chain,” she said.

On Wednesday, Herlihy cross examined Robert Wood, Norfolk Southern’s director of hazardous materials, extensively. He agreed that he did not advise the other members of the unified incident command team of the opinion of OxyVinyls that polymerization was not taking place in the vinyl chloride tanker cars.

“The word that came to us was that (OxyVinyl) did not think it was polymerizing,” Wood said.

According to the Chemical & Engineering website, the NTSB investigation indicated that Norfolk Southern’s contractors were concerned that stabilized vinyl chloride in one of the tank cars had started to polymerize, which could have caused the tank to explode and send toxic gas and shrapnel in all directions.

When Herlihy asked Wood if the temperatures obtained from the vinyl chloride tankers suggested that they were “stable,” Wood said they did, but the temperature readings they got were not coming from the best place to get an accurate reading. He said they were “measuring external temperatures of cars on a cold day.” Wood said there were a “multitude” of reasons the command team feared that polymerization was taking place in the tanks, in addition to the temperature readings associated with the tanks.

Wood said the East Palestine derailment was the first time Norfolk Southern ever vented and burned rail cars.