$182 Million Settlement in the Deadliest Crash in Metro-North History
Won by Gair, Gair, Conason, Rubinowitz, Bloom, Hershenhorn, Steigman & Mackauf.
After a Westchester jury found Metro-North 71% at fault for the 2015 Valhalla grade-crossing disaster, a settlement exceeding $182 million resolved the claims of roughly 30 victims and their families.
What happened
On the evening of February 3, 2015, during the rush-hour commute, a sport-utility vehicle came to rest on the Commerce Street grade crossing in Valhalla, New York, as the warning gates came down around it. A northbound Metro-North Harlem Line train struck the vehicle at roughly 50 miles per hour. The force of the impact tore loose a length of the railroad's electrified third rail, which drove up through the floor of the train's lead car and touched off a fire inside the packed coach.
Six people were killed: the driver of the SUV and five train passengers. More than a dozen others were injured, several of them gravely. Nearly a decade later, it remains the deadliest crash in Metro-North Railroad's history, and at the time it was the deadliest U.S. rail accident in years.
Gair Gair Conason represented roughly 30 plaintiffs in the litigation that followed: the families of passengers who died and the riders who survived with catastrophic injuries. The firm took the case to a liability trial in Westchester County Supreme Court, led by attorneys Ben Rubinowitz and Richard Steigman.
At trial, the plaintiffs' team set out to show that the catastrophe was not simply the result of a vehicle on the tracks. They argued that the train's engineer failed to slow the train soon enough as the crossing came into view, and that the railroad's third-rail design was dangerously flawed, allowing the energized rail to dislodge on impact, spear the passenger compartment, and feed the fire that followed. The case turned on engineering, operating practice, and the choices the railroad had made about safety on the line.
In July 2024, the jury accepted that account. It apportioned 71% of the fault to Metro-North for the deaths of the five passengers and the injuries to the survivors, faulting both the engineer's handling of the train and the railroad's oversight of the third-rail system. The jury also assigned the railroad 63% of the responsibility for the death of the SUV's driver.
With liability decided, the parties reached a global settlement exceeding $182 million, announced in January 2026, that resolved the claims arising from the collision. The largest single recovery, about $79 million, went to one passenger, calculated against a lifetime of lost earnings. Awards to the families of others killed ranged from roughly $35 million to $4 million.
The settlement was one of the largest ever reached in a New York grade-crossing case, and it held a public railroad accountable for one of the worst commuter-rail disasters in the region's history.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
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