Good. REALLY good!  The trouble is, the darned trucking company will just file for bankruptcy and will probably never pay a dime.

No doubt the trucking company has insurance that will pay this.

Insurance has ceilings then they go after assets of the company. I agree with HW, they might try to BK out of it

Don't count on that. My day job is handling insurance liability claims and trucking companies (along with cab companies) are traditionally the worst for accepting liability. I think it stems from an environment where many companies will fire any driver with an at-fault loss.

My all time favorite was the time I called a fleet carrier's insurance company and only got to say I was calling about a specific loss, which I was immediately cut off with a loud venting for a few minutes about 'his guy' isn't liable for the loss and how we're always bugging them on losses that our policy holders cause.

Then, he asked me what accident I was calling about...

Hi Chris

Interesting story, but can Amtrak collect. 

Thanks for sharing this news story.

Side bar, my sister-in-law & family lives just out side of Reno.

Know the area.

I witnessed an accident a number of years ago where a step van from one of the larger delivery companies ran a red light and then halfway thru the intersection decided to make a left hand turn across 3 lanes of traffic from the right hand lane and t boned a 4 door sedan right in front of me and pushed it across the intersection and over a curb and then proceeded to drive about a 1/2 a block down the road before he stopped. After I finished dealing with the police and went home I figured I get a call from someones lawyer or the company or an insurance person, NOPE, the driver himself called me and wanted to know where I got off telling the cops he ran a redlight. Fortunately my stepson who happens to be a lawyer was there and I  told the guy he needs to talk to my lawyer and handed him the phone. He read the guy the riot act about calling and harassing a witness.

Jerry

Jerry, I'm not the least bit shocked to read that.

The thing that drives me nuts is that many trucking companies are self-insured and won't allow you to file a claim at all. They'll tell you they have to start the vclaim process and haven't done so, and you gotta wait for them to think on if they'll ever do so at all. I've seen it dozens of times over the years.

People crack me up when they only have liability on their policy with the justification of, "Any loss I'm in will be someone else's fault." First, that's moronic to assume you can't possibly cause an accident. Second, you can never assume that the other person even has insurance, or that they won't take the other person's version of the loss (which they must unless there's evidence to support against what their person told them).

Amtrak can prevail until the trucking company whines to their legislators about the negative impact to their private company, including losing jobs, by a government agency. Then certain legislators i.e., government, read us taxpayers, will give Amtrak money to back off.

Now if the UP, on whose RoW it occured, were to join in on Amtrak's side, that would be another story.

UP is also a plaintiff and was awarded damages.