People who want more time to consider Norfolk Southern’s $600 million derailment settlement offer have filed objections in federal court.

Residents who lived within 20 miles of the February 3, 2023, fiery derailment in East Palestine had until Monday to notify attorneys involved in a lawsuit if they wanted to opt-out of the settlement and pursue their own legal path.

Some people who may qualify for a piece of the settlement have filed objections, including 36 families who have hired the lawyer Daniel Abraham to file their objections.

A Statement of Objections filed by Abraham lists fifteen reasons his clients oppose the July 1 opt-out deadline, including that they feel they are being forced to make a decision before having enough information, and before enough time has passed for symptoms and injuries from the spill and fumes from the derailment have become apparent.

Some opponents believe the settlements should be offered to each individual, and not per household as outlined in the settlement.

Other objections are listed below:

Emotional distress has not been properly evaluated.

The attorney fees that class counsel is anticipated to request from the total settlement proceeds will significantly reduce the funds available for class members and will result in inadequate payments to class members for their damages.

 The railroad is not being penalized sufficiently for the amount of damage the incident has caused.

The amount of the settlement is not sufficient to compensate each individual injured and affected by the incident.

 Interim class counsel negotiated a personal injury settlement for claims outside the scope of their representation as class counsel.

We are being forced into the class action and have had different attorneys forced to represent me when we/I already have hired counsel to do so, which results in two attorney fees. All attorney fees should be paid from the fees awarded from the gross settlement.

The class counsel is being compensated for portions of the settlement being paid for personal injuries, for which the class counsel is not representing us/me and for which we/I have already hired our/my own individual counsel to pursue those claims.

There is no medical monitoring program to protect the interests of class and non-class members.

Since the specifics of the class action attorney fees have not been submitted, we/I reserve the right to raise additional objections after reviewing the submission for class fees and costs.

Failure to disclose the “confidential” terms of settlement to class members.

Failure to provide a grid that shows the criteria used to determine the amount distributed to each class member.

The release associated with this class settlement agreement should be limited to the Defendants who are paying compensation in this class action.

Others have filed objections as well.  As of Wednesday, Norfolk Southern had not filed a response in court. 

21 News has reached out to the railroad’s media relations department which has declined to comment.