An Engineered Injustice (Philadelphia Legal)

by Myers, Jr. , William L.

  Olin pauses, then gets down to it. “What we know right now is as follows: At 12:06 yesterday afternoon, Amtrak Train 174, a Northeast Regional, left Philadelphia’s 30th Street Station. The consist included one locomotive—an ACS-64 built for Amtrak by Siemens—followed by six coach cars, the first two of which were the business-class and quiet cars. Eleven minutes after leaving 30th Street, the train, traveling on Track 2, entered the Torresdale curve in Northeast Philadelphia. The maximum permissible speed through the curve is eighty miles an hour, and the train had, in fact, slowed to eighty going into the curve, and maintained that speed through the curve and onto the straightaway. Approximately fifteen seconds after leaving the curve and traveling eighteen hundred feet down the straightway, it appears the locomotive struck an Amtrak TracVac excavating machine.

  “The TracVac was a brand-new machine used to perform a number of maintenance functions including the excavation and removal of dirt and ballast. The machine was one hundred and ten feet long, ten feet wide, fifteen feet high, weighed ninety tons, and was painted bright yellow. Amtrak had recently purchased the TracVac to replace similar machines owned and operated by a company Amtrak subcontracted to.

  “A preliminary download of the locomotive’s event recorder, the ‘black box,’ shows that before the crash the engineer did not apply either the emergency brakes or the regular braking system. Of course, an important part of our investigation will be to determine why.”

  Olin pauses for a moment, during which Vaughn glances at Mick, whom he finds looking at him. They’re clearly both wondering the same thing: Did Eddy really not try to stop the train?

  Olin explains that the TracVac was being used by the track department. It had been making ongoing repairs to a section of Track 1, which had been out of service for two days. The day before, no work had been done because most of the crew was sent to the Harrisburg line for emergency repair work. The machine should therefore have been parked on Track 1; why it wasn’t was a mystery.

  Olin opens himself up to questions. Because the questioners do not themselves have microphones, Olin has to repeat their questions before answering them. “The first question,” he says, “pertains to the number of victims.” Olin takes a deep breath. “There were two hundred and seventy-eight people on the train, including five crew members. As of now, there are twenty-nine confirmed deaths and two hundred injuries of varying degrees of severity.”

  The next question is why the engineer would not have seen the giant, bright-yellow, ninety-ton track machine and applied his brakes.

  “That will, of course, be a main inquiry in our investigation.”

  “And what was the TracVac doing on a live track in the first place?” another questioner asks. Olin repeats the question and answers that this, too, will be a main part of the investigation.

  Olin looks to his left and listens as another muffled voice asks a question. “The next question is whether the train had any cameras that would show the crash. And the answer is that the train had both a forward-facing video recorder and an inward-facing video recorder. The forward-facing recorder captures the track ahead. The inward-facing recorder films the engineer. Unfortunately, Amtrak and the engineer’s labor union are currently in the midst of contract negotiations, so the cameras were turned off pending an agreement about their use.”

  In response to this last point, a chorus of moans wafts through the air.

  Another question is asked off camera. Olin listens, then says, “The question is whether we have spoken with the engineer. Interviewing the crew—and passengers, of course—is a top priority. The engineer, however, was badly hurt in the crash and remains hospitalized. I just learned before the press conference that he has obtained legal representation, and our IIC will be reaching out to his attorney this morning.”

  Olin pauses to listen, then says, “The questioner asks what I can tell you about the engineer’s experience and history with Amtrak. The engineer’s name, as many of you know by now, is . . .”

  Mick lowers the volume just as Olin begins talking about Eddy. Then he exchanges glances with Vaughn. “Susan, Vaughn has something he needs to tell you.”

  “The engineer’s my cousin,” Vaughn says. “His wife asked me to help them through this.”

  It seems to take Susan a long time to process what Vaughn has told her. When she finally grasps it, she doesn’t look happy. “Honestly, I don’t know how I feel about that.” She turns away wearily.

  “I understand. I really do,” he says. “I don’t know how I feel about it myself.” He doesn’t explain why he has to help Eddy, at least with the NTSB. How he owes his cousin. That would open a can of worms he doesn’t want to share with anyone—expose a secret that’s been buried for sixteen years. “I’ll need to talk to him. See what he says.”

  Susan turns back toward Vaughn. “So talk to him. See what he tells you. Then we’ll all discuss it. You, me, and Mick.”

  “It may very well pose a conflict,” Mick says. “You representing the engineer, and Susan being an injured passenger.”

  There’s a knock at the door. Everyone turns to see an older man, well dressed, professorial. “Hey, everyone,” he begins, his voice serious and folksy at once, “I know this is a terrible time for all of you. I wouldn’t bother you if it weren’t urgent. There’s word that Amtrak claim agents are scouring the halls, trying to get injured passengers into giving statements that would seriously undermine their rights, and—”

  Mick raises his arm. “That won’t be a problem. You’re looking at a roomful of lawyers.”

  “Including me,” Susan says, her voice making clear that it’s time for the intruder to leave. He does so, and they hear him move to the next room down, where he knocks on the door.

  “Is it legal for law firms to send runners to hospital rooms?” asks Angie.

  Vaughn shakes his head. “Not even close.”

  4

  TUESDAY, JUNE 17, CONTINUED

  Mick and Tommy stay behind with Susan while Vaughn and Angie Uber back to Center City. As soon as they enter the firm’s offices, paralegals Jill and Andrea and file clerk Ivana approach them in the lobby to find out how Susan is doing. Vaughn describes Susan’s injuries and tells them she’s in pain but her injuries will heal. He leaves Angie to share Susan’s account of the crash. As soon as he sits down behind his desk, his phone rings and Angie tells him that Nelson Wexler of the NTSB is on the line.

  Vaughn takes a deep breath and lifts the receiver.

  “Mr. Coburn, we understand from Mr. Coburn’s wife . . . Well, let me ask you first, are the two of you related?”

  “He’s my cousin.”

  There’s a pause at the other end of the line, then Wexler continues. “Edward’s wife told our investigators at the hospital that you are representing him. Is that correct?”

  “It is.”

  “You understand that ours is not a criminal investigation. We’re just trying to gather information to determine the cause of the accident and, ultimately, make some recommendations as to how to prevent this kind of thing from happening again.”

  “That’s what Mr. Olin said at the press conference,” Vaughn replies, though he knows it doesn’t take a genius to foresee that any serious fault on Eddy’s part could very well lead to prosecution, with so many people dead and badly injured.

  “So I assume you’ll have no problem producing Mr. Coburn for an interview.”

  “I certainly have every intention of cooperating fully with the investigation. Before I’ll agree to make my client available, though, I’ll have to talk with him myself. I haven’t been able to do so because he’s not regained consciousness since the accident. In the meantime, perhaps you wouldn’t mind answering a few questions that I have.”

  “Such as?”

  “Whether you found anything in my client’s blood. I assume you’ve had it tested by now.”

  Wexler doesn’t say anything.

  “This has to be a two-way street,” Vaughn says.


  “Up to a point,” the IIC says. He sighs. “Your cousin’s blood came up clean. No controlled substances or alcohol.”

  Vaughn breathes a sigh of relief. “Thank you. I appreciate your sharing that.”

  “You were worried?” asks Wexler.

  Vaughn hesitates briefly, then says, “Absolutely not.” He’s certain that Wexler picked up on the slight delay.

  “Will you agree to have your client sign a HIPAA form, to give us access to his medical records?”

  “I don’t see why that would be necessary, given that his blood came up clean.”

  Wexler, a new hardness in his voice, says, “Mr. Coburn, it is absolutely imperative that we find out the cause of this tragedy. We have to exhaust all avenues of information, leave no stone unturned. Your client may not have been under the influence at the time of the accident, but for all we know he had a medical condition that caused him to lose consciousness. That’s all we’d be looking for, really.”

  Vaughn considers this and tells the IIC that he’ll discuss it with his cousin, if and when he regains consciousness. “In the meantime, I hope you’re looking into how that TracVac came to be on a live track.”

  “Absolutely. We’re pursuing that as well. We’re looking at everything, just as board member Olin said in his press conference.”

  Vaughn and Wexler probe each other a few more minutes before Vaughn ends the conversation with a promise to call the IIC once he’s had a chance to speak to Eddy. He leans back in his chair and closes his eyes. He’s only slept a couple of hours in the past two days, and he’s exhausted. But there’s no time for rest, so he forces himself to open his eyes and stand. As soon as he does so, the phone rings and he presses the button for the speaker. It’s Angie, telling him that ten calls came in while he was on the phone. “Producers from the news shows for Channels 3, 6, and 10, and Fox 29. Someone from Fox News. A freelancer who writes for the Daily Beast. Chris Matthews from MSNBC—he wanted me to make sure you knew he’s from Philadelphia. And Wolf Blitzer, who wanted me to make sure you knew he’s . . . Wolf Blitzer.”

  Vaughn drops his head. “Wonderful. Just wonderful.” He pauses and thinks for a minute. “That didn’t add up to ten.”

  Angie inhales. “There were two more. A woman called and claimed she had ‘dirt’ on Eddy. Said she’d keep it quiet if we paid her. The last person was a guy. He said he had relatives on the train, and if Eddy didn’t fess up, he was going to . . . to . . . kill him.”

  “A death threat? Seriously?”

  “He sounded serious. Should I call the police?”

  “Absolutely. I can’t have people calling here and making threats. Make sure Mick knows, too. And Tommy. Definitely tell him. Thanks.”

  Mick’s brother, Tommy McFarland, served hard time in prison. Still has the prison tats to prove it. And is as solid as a brick wall. Tommy’s the kind of guy you want covering your back if things get bad. And, as the firm’s private investigator, Tommy has done exactly that. Many times.

  Vaughn sinks back in his chair and rubs his eyes. This thing is only one day old and already it’s getting nuts. He walks to Mick’s office, where he finds Jill and Andrea positioned before the television. It’s tuned to CNN, and the anchor is reporting that the NTSB has just released the names of the—now thirty-one—dead passengers. They include businesspeople, teachers, college students, a pregnant mother of three, an aspiring actress, and a retired New York police captain, among others. Many of their photos appear on the screen as their names are read. None of the names or pictures is familiar to Vaughn until the anchor reads the last name: Alexander Nunzio.

  “Jesus,” Vaughn says. He looks at Angie, who has joined them. Her face is white.

  Alexander Nunzio is the twentysomething son of notorious Philly underboss James Nunzio, a.k.a. Jimmy Nutzo, one of the most bloodthirsty gangsters in the city’s rich history of organized crime. Angie’s a South Philly girl, and Vaughn has no problem reading the message on her face: Eddy’d better not be to blame for that crash.

  But wait . . . Why would Jimmy Nutzo’s kid be riding a train? Could his presence have played a part in the wreck? Could he have been a target? Vaughn shakes his head. It doesn’t matter why. The kid is dead, and if Eddy has any real culpability, he’ll find himself in a vise with the law on one side and outlaws on the other.

  Back in his own office, Vaughn lifts the phone and dials Derek Kalin, whom Mick said had some background for him on past train crashes. They introduce themselves, and Kalin tells Vaughn there are three important and relatively recent cases he needs to know about.

  “The first is the 2008 Chatsworth crash. There, a Metrolink commuter train collided head-on with a Union Pacific freight train in Southern California. Twenty-five people were killed, and dozens were injured. The NTSB decided two things caused the crash. The first was the engineer’s failure to see and stop at a red signal because he was texting on his cell phone. The second was the lack of a positive train-control system that would have stopped the train short of the red signal.”

  Vaughn takes a deep breath. “And what did they do to the engineer?”

  “Nothing. He was killed in the crash. The engineer also died in a second Metrolink accident in 2015. That train hit a pickup truck that’d become stuck on the tracks. The engineer appeared to have done nothing wrong.” Kalin pauses here to take a drink of water.

  “The third crash,” Kalin says, “occurred in 2013 in the Bronx. A Metro-North train derailed when it raced around a sharp curve at eighty-two miles an hour. The speed limit on the curve was thirty. Four people died and seventy were injured.”

  “And the engineer?”

  “Survived the crash. He claimed that he’d gone into a ‘trance’ before reaching the curve, and that he remembered nothing about the crash itself. It was later determined that he had undiagnosed sleep apnea, and the Bronx district attorney’s office decided not to prosecute.”

  “I don’t think anything like that came into play here,” Vaughn says. The only times he’s ever heard of his cousin passing out were when relatives told stories about Eddy being blind drunk. But the NTSB tested his cousin’s blood, and it was clean.

  The call ends and Vaughn sits back in his chair, thinking about the engineer in the Chatsworth crash. The one on the phone.

  Were you talking on the phone, Eddy? Were you texting?

  5

  WEDNESDAY TO FRIDAY, JUNE 18–20

  For Vaughn, Wednesday and Thursday rush by in a blur. The NTSB’s IIC, Wexler, calls the office several times, trying to reach Vaughn to see if Eddy is awake and able to talk. More law firms post Google ads soliciting victims of the crash. Vaughn scours the Internet to learn what he can about the type of locomotive Eddy was driving and about the track machine the train crashed into. He even researches sleep apnea to see if it really could cause someone to simply lose consciousness.

  The cable news channels continue their relentless coverage of the crash. The newest angle is that no one at Amtrak can explain how the TracVac came to be on Track 2 instead of Track 1, where it was supposed to have been stored while its crew was called to the Harrisburg line for emergency repairs. NTSB member Richard Olin offers this update at his Wednesday-morning press conference. Hours later, the mayor of Philadelphia goes before the cameras and criticizes Amtrak for lax safety procedures with regard to the TracVac. Then he rips into Eddy, saying, “There’s no doubt the train’s engineer was acting recklessly. He absolutely should’ve seen that huge track machine, and he absolutely should’ve stopped his train. There’s no excuse in the world, absolutely none, for his actions.”

  On Wednesday afternoon, Vaughn makes his daily trip to Eddy’s hospital room, where he encounters Eddy’s parents and his two sisters—Vaughn’s aunt, uncle, and cousins—his own parents, plus Kate’s parents and siblings.

  Later, in the hallway, Vaughn tells Angie over the phone, “You’d never know from the crowd and flowers that Eddy is the most hated man on the Eastern Seaboard.”

&
nbsp; Vaughn hangs up and is joined by Eddy’s wife and Eddy’s parents, who press him for details about the NTSB investigation and whether their son will face criminal charges. He tells them that everything is up in the air. “The NTSB’s mission is to gather information and determine the probable cause of the accident. The agency doesn’t bring criminal charges. But that doesn’t mean that the DA or the FBI couldn’t prosecute Eddy if evidence turns up showing that he was criminally negligent.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Eddy’s mother, Claire, says.

  “Eddy would never take chances with his train,” Kate chimes in. “Do you know he won a safety award last year?”

  Vaughn exchanges glances with Eddy’s father, Frank, and the two men walk down the hallway. Frank tells Vaughn in a quiet voice, “If you do find out something bad, give me a call. Me, not Claire. I don’t want her to hear it on the news. I want her to hear it from me. You understand?”

  Vaughn nods nervously. He’s always been intimidated by his uncle. Frank Coburn is a big man, and serious. Vaughn can’t recall Frank smiling more than twice in all the time he’s known the man. A year older than Vaughn’s father, Frank Coburn is the undisputed leader of the family. An ex-cop, Frank is the one family members go to when they have issues they can’t resolve themselves—including when their kids get into trouble with the law.

  “Yes, sir. I definitely understand.”

  Thursday evening, Vaughn’s phone rings. It’s Kate. “Eddy can talk tomorrow,” she tells him. “They took him off the narcotics, and he’s been awake since this afternoon. I asked him, and he says he’s ready to talk to you.” Here, Kate pauses. “He’s really upset. He’s learned about the crash from the TV, and he’s blaming himself.”