Lawsuit blames rail cars for Cedar Rapids’ 2008 flood

CEDAR RAPIDS - On Oct. 7 in St. Paul, Minn., local attorney Sam Sheronick will try to keep alive his claim that Cedar Rapids' historic 2008 flood was in part a man-made disaster.

That the June 2008 flood - which caused an estimated $5.4 billion in damage - was not simply a natural disaster is the premise of Sheronick's unnoticed, 16-month-old, class-action lawsuit. Sheronick and another attorney have brought their case on behalf of a group who lost property in the flood of 2008.

Sheronick contends that owners of four railroad bridges that cross the Cedar River at Cedar Rapids caused or exacerbated the 2008 flood by loading the bridges with train cars filled with rocks as the flood crest approached.

Flood water subsequently toppled the rail bridge near the Penford Products plant just downstream from the Eighth Avenue bridge, dumping the rail cars, rock and bridge structure into the river and partially sending a second rail bridge further downriver into the river as the floodwaters rose, the lawsuit states.

The collapsed bridges then worked as dams, causing and/or exacerbating the flooding, which resulted in 'great and extensive property damage and other damage,” the lawsuit states.

Rail cars intentionally placed on any of the bridges impeded the river's flow, the lawsuit said.

Sheronick and attorney Erick Ratinoff, of Sacramento, Calif., filed the lawsuit on June 7, 2013 - five years to the week from when the Cedar River crested at 31.12 feet, more than 11 feet higher than the 20-foot height that the river had reached only twice since 1851. Major flood stage of the river in the city is 16 feet.

The defendants in the lawsuit include the Cedar Rapids/Iowa City Railway Co., its owner, Alliant Energy, the Union Pacific Railroad Co. and others.

Sheronick is attempting to qualify the lawsuit as a class-action matter. The original lawsuit listed five owners of flood-damaged property in Cedar Rapids as plaintiffs in the case. They are Mark Griffioen of Swisher, Mike Ludvicek of Swisher, Joyce Ludvicek of Cedar Rapids, Sandra Skelton of Cedar Rapids and Brian Vanous of Quasqueton.

The lawsuit has attracted as little traction to date as notice.

A month after it was filed in Linn County District Court in June 7, 2013, the corporate defendants succeeded in getting the matter moved to the U.S. District Court in Cedar Rapids.

In quick order there, U.S. District Court Senior Judge Edward McManus dismissed the court case. referring it to the U.S. Surface Transportation Board, which McManus said has exclusive jurisdiction in disputes involving an interstate railroad.

Justin Foss, spokesman for Alliant Energy, on Thursday said the company doesn't comment on the substance of pending litigation.

'We do, however, think the District Court got it right and the 8th Circuit will affirm,” he said.

Sheronick has appealed to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 8th Circuit, seeking to have the lawsuit's claims litigated in state court.

Sheronick's website promotes the 'Cedar Rapids Flood Class Action” case, and says this; 'Simply stated, scientific evidence at trial will prove a minor, run of the mill flood was turned into a catastrophic disaster as a result of, among other things, actions taken by railroads and others to protect their property at the expense of property owners in the Cedar Rapids area.”

Sheronick's website states that the Cedar Rapids flood was not unlike Hurricane Katrina.

'Type the search, ‘Was Hurricane Katrina a Man-Made Disaster?', into any search engine and you will find that Hurricane Katrina was an unremarkable, garden variety hurricane which would have caused very little damage had it not been for a series of human errors and bad decisions which transformed that minor storm into a catastrophic disaster of epic proportions,” he states on his website.

In the six years following the 2008 flood in Cedar Rapids, city officials and the city's expert consultants, as well as state and federal officials, have termed the Cedar Rapids flood a natural disaster of historic proportions. The rail bridges played a minor role in the height of the river crest and the reach of the flood to 10 square miles of the city, they have said.