Quebec’s Court of Appeal upheld a 2022 lower court ruling that found Canadian Pacific Railway (CP) had no legal liability for the Lac-Mégantic rail disaster that killed 47 people in 2013.
The Government of Québec and six insurers had sued the company, seeking for CP to pay into a $460 million compensation fund for about 4,000 victims of the incident that saw rail cars loaded with crude oil breaking loose and rolling into the town before derailing and exploding.
It was the fourth-deadliest rail accident in Canadian history. The last Canadian rail accident to have a higher death toll was the St-Hilaire train disaster in 1864, which killed 99 people.
CP said it bore no responsibility for the disaster because the train was not operated by CP employees or travelling on CP tracks when it derailed.
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A 2022 Superior Court ruling and the Quebec Court of Appeal ruled that the train’s driver and his employer, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway Limited, bore responsibility for the disaster. The appeal court also ruled in late February that the Railway Safety Act did not require Canadian Pacific to verify whether the connecting carrier, Montreal, Maine & Atlantic, would transport the cargo safely.
The Transportation Safety Board of Canada has also blamed the derailment on Montreal, Maine & Atlantic and its crew, citing a “weak safety culture.” The board has previously identified multiple causes for the accident, principally leaving a train unattended on a main line, failure to set enough handbrakes, and lack of a backup safety mechanism.
