Judge Adds $4.2 Million in Sanctions After BNSF Destroys Evidence in Four-Death Crossing Crash

Shortly after 10 p.m. on September 26, 2003, a westbound BNSF freight train struck a car at the Ferry Street grade crossing in Anoka, Minnesota. All four occupants died: Brian Frazier, 20; Corey Chase, 20; Harry Rhoades Jr., 19; and Bridgette Shannon, 17. BNSF quickly blamed the driver, claiming the car had driven around activated warning gates to beat the train.

The families hired separate attorneys who coordinated their cases. Paul Godlewski of Schwebel, Goetz and Sieben represented the Chase family. Co-counsel Robert Pottroff, Sharon Van Dyck, and William Bongard represented the other three families. Together they argued BNSF had failed to maintain the crossing's signals and lights, and that at least three prior collisions at the same location had gone unaddressed.

The six-week liability and damages trial concluded in summer 2008. The jury found BNSF 90 percent causally negligent and the driver 10 percent at fault. It awarded $6 million to each family, a total of $24 million, which Minnesota Lawyer reported was the largest known wrongful-death verdict in state history for families of emancipated, unmarried adult children.

Judge Ellen Maas then took up BNSF's conduct during litigation. She found what she described as a pattern of misconduct beginning within minutes of the crash: the railroad lost a laptop containing locomotive event-recorder data and later produced a device with altered data; employees gave misleading depositions and affidavits; and company witnesses obstructed law-enforcement access to the accident site. The judge wrote that BNSF engaged in a "systematic exploitation of the civil-justice system of a pervasiveness seldom seen outside of John Grisham novels." In early 2009, she imposed $4,180,398.90 in sanctions, comprising attorney fees, litigation costs, and percentages of the liability award.

BNSF appealed. In September 2010, the Minnesota Court of Appeals affirmed the sanctions award but ordered a new liability trial, finding that the jury had received instructions on common-law negligence rather than the federal standard of care required by the Federal Railroad Safety Act. On March 28, 2012, the Minnesota Supreme Court reversed the Court of Appeals and reinstated the original $24 million verdict in full, along with the sanctions.