Railroad Crossing Lawsuit Settled for $6M Over Deactivated Signal

The family of a woman killed when a train struck her SUV in 2010, has reached a $6 million wrongful death settlement with a railroad company, which allegedly turned off a train signal earlier in the day for maintenance work, causing the fatal accident at the crossing. 

The complaint was brought by the family of Katie Ann Lunn, 26, a Chicago dance instructor, who was driving home from a competition on April 16, 2010, when her vehicle was hit by a high-speed Amtrak train.

According to allegations reached in the railroad crossing lawsuit, the signals failed to warn her that a train was approaching because they had been turned off earlier in the day, and remained off when the accident occurred at 9:40 p.m. while Lunn’s vehicle was crossing the tracks.

The defendant, Illinois Central Railroad Company, admitted liability in the case, and the settlement came following jury selection in a trial to determine damages in the case. The jury was likely to have been shown video footage of the actual train accident.

Expected to testify in the trial was a Cook County prosecutor and another witness who each drove over the tracks just seconds before the train struck Lunn’s vehicle, and were expected to state that the crossing signal lights were not working and the gate to prevent cars from going over the tracks did not descend until most of the train had passed.

Lunn was a dancer who taught at the Joffrey Ballet School in Chicago and the School of Performing Arts in Naperville. She had been returning from watching her students compete the night she died.