Key Points

  • The Sixth Circuit affirmed the denial of Rule 60(b)(3), 60(b)(6) and 60(d)(3) relief sought by 196 East Palestine residents who waived personal-injury claims in the $600 million Norfolk Southern settlement.
  • Class counsel's Rule 23 fiduciary duty runs to the class, not the court, and so cannot support a fraud-on-the-court claim; counsel also had no duty to disclose a PR firm's role in editing an expert video.
  • Post-approval scientific evidence, standing alone, does not show that class counsel lied to the court before the settlement was approved.
  • Norfolk Southern had no duty to disclose the confidential opt-out thresholds in its Supplemental Termination Agreement, which the court described as a common and routinely approved feature of class settlements.
  • The district court did not abuse its broad discretion by denying an evidentiary hearing on the Rule 60 motion.

A federal appeals court on Tuesday refused to reopen Norfolk Southern's $600 million class settlement with residents of East Palestine, Ohio. The court rejected claims by residents who had waived personal-injury suits that their own lawyers and the railroad hid evidence about the long-term health risks of the town's chemical train derailment.

A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit affirmed U.S. District Judge Benita Y. Pearson of the Northern District of Ohio, who had denied a motion by 196 residents for relief from the judgment approving the settlement. Circuit Judge Thapar wrote for the panel, which also included Circuit Judges Readler and Hermandorfer. No judge wrote separately.

The ruling leaves in place a deal under which residents have already begun collecting payments. It holds that class counsel's duty under Rule 23 runs to the class rather than the court, so it cannot support a claim that the lawyers defrauded the judge. And it holds that Norfolk Southern had no duty to disclose confidential opt-out thresholds that would let it walk away from the deal.

"Compromise requires give and take," Judge Thapar wrote in the opinion's first line. A few residents, the opinion said, wanted their right to sue back. "The district court saw no basis for that extraordinary relief, and neither do we."

The derailment of a train carrying nearly a thousand tons of chemicals launched a class action with nearly half a million members. The settlement entitled every class member to direct payments, offered an additional payment to those who waived personal-injury claims, and allowed individualized claims for extraordinary losses or injuries. The district court approved it after a fairness hearing, and the Sixth Circuit affirmed over objections in 2025.

The movants, a small fraction of the class, sought relief under Rule 60, which allows courts to set aside final judgments in narrow circumstances such as fraud. They argued, and had to prove by clear and convincing evidence, that class counsel misled them by promoting one side of the scientific debate and that Norfolk Southern structured testing and settlement terms to the class's disadvantage.

The movants focused first on a video of Dr. Carson, an expert who estimated low long-term risks from the exposure, which class counsel played for the class outside court while describing Carson as "completely independent." After approval, the movants obtained an email showing that RebuttalPR, a public-relations firm, provided "the edited version of the" video to class counsel. They compared the case to a 1944 Supreme Court decision, Hazel-Atlas Glass Co. v. Hartford-Empire Co., in which a lawyer passed off his own ghostwritten article under an expert's name.

"There's no evidence that RebuttalPR secretly wrote or deceptively edited Carson's presentation," Judge Thapar wrote, so class counsel "didn't cloak its own opinion (or a PR firm's) with a false name." The independence remark was made to the class, not the court, and the movants did not dispute that class counsel never retained Carson.

Nor did class counsel have a duty to tell the court about the PR firm. Rule 23 makes class lawyers fiduciaries to class members, Judge Thapar wrote. "But that duty runs to the class, not to the court. So it can't ground a fraud-on-the-court theory." Even toward the class, the court said, "the point of class representation is to relieve everyday Americans of the burdens of litigation, like deciding on a PR firm or preparing deposition questions." Ohio's candor-to-the-tribunal rule, the panel held, does not cover background facts.

The movants also said class counsel covered up the views of Stephen Petty, an expert it had retained who later opposed the settlement and estimated far higher risks. But the district court learned Petty's views through a third-party declaration, the panel noted. His underlying data was covered by a protective order that the court had refused to modify at the objectors' request, so the movants' complaint, Judge Thapar wrote, faulted class counsel "for failing to file a doomed motion."

The movants cited internal government correspondence calling the derailment's plume "really toxic," along with post-approval soil testing and an academic study. "These new discoveries don't move the needle," Judge Thapar wrote, adding that the record had always contained conflicting evidence and that "settling the litigation didn't settle the science."

Claims against Norfolk Southern under Rule 60(b)(3), which covers fraud or misconduct by an opposing party, fared no better. The railroad's request that the Environmental Protection Agency drop five chemicals from a testing list "wasn't a nefarious cover up," the court said, and settling six days before the expert-designation deadline was not misconduct.

The panel also rejected a challenge to the Supplemental Termination Agreement, a confidential side document setting the opt-out levels at which Norfolk Southern could terminate the deal. The public settlement disclosed the agreement's existence and its confidentiality, the court said. Secrecy keeps outsiders from learning how many opt-outs would disrupt a deal, and "courts routinely approve settlements with confidential termination clauses," Judge Thapar wrote.

The panel rejected a request under Rule 60(b)(6), which is limited to "exceptional or extraordinary circumstances," because it rested on the same facts. "Those facts become no more compelling when repackaged in a different Rule 60 wrapper," Judge Thapar wrote. Nor was an evidentiary hearing required, the panel held, because the district court had concluded that "ending the battle of experts early wasn't fraud, regardless of which side had the edge."

The long-term effects of the chemical release may not be known for decades, the opinion said. "But the residents of East Palestine couldn't wait decades for compensation," Judge Thapar wrote. "Unwinding the settlement over claims of undisclosed evidence would subvert that careful compromise."

Lawyers for the residents included Jedidiah Irving Bressman of Bressman Law. Class counsel was represented by Seth A. Katz of Burg Simpson Eldredge Hersh & Jardine P.C. Norfolk Southern Railway Company and Norfolk Southern Corporation were represented by Alan Schoenfeld of Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr LLP.

The panel affirmed in full and remanded nothing, leaving the settlement approval and the movants' personal-injury releases intact. The opinion was recommended for publication.