Almost four years after a jury ruled that the Denver and Rio Grande Western Railroad could not have prevented the 1983 Thistle landslide, attorneys Allen K. Young and Michael Richman began arguing the issue again Tuesday in 4th District Court.
Their arguments were basically the same as they were in August 1989; Young saying one of the causes of the slide was a large cut the railroad made at the toe of the slide and Richman saying the slide started at the top and the cut was not a contributing factor. This time, however, Young had his star witness with him to try to convince the new jury to reach a different verdict.In 1986, 13 Thistle landowners filed a $1 million suit against the railroad, the state and Utah County, alleging a large mudslide that blocked the Spanish Fork River in April 1983 could have been prevented. The slide backed up water for several miles and created a lake more than 150 feet deep that destroyed the small town of Thistle. The claims against the state and county were dismissed, but the suit against the railroad went to trial and a jury ruled in favor of the railroad.
The Utah Court of Appeals, however, last year ordered a new trial, saying the trial judge erred in not allowing Young's key witness to testify. That witness, John Shroder, chairman of the geology department at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and a world-renowned expert on landslides, wrote a doctoral thesis in 1966 on Utah landslides.
Tuesday, Shroder testified that the railroad removed more than 50 million cubic yards of material from the toe of the slide and that cut was a cause of the Thistle landslide. Railroad engineers should have known the danger of the cut and should have taken steps to drain the slide area or buttress it, he said.
"You don't ever cut the toe of a landslide, you just don't do it," Shroder said.
In testimony that Young said is crucial to his case, Shroder testified that a slide area about a mile west of the Thistle slide did not move, even though it may have been more saturated. The slide area is very similar to the Thistle slide and the fact that it did not slip is more evidence that the railroad cut contributed to the Thistle slide, he said.
In opening arguments, Young said the railroad knew for decades that the slide was moving but took no remedial action to stop it, but rather continued to remove dirt from the cut.
"Each spring the railroad would get a little warning," Young said. "That slide was always telling folks, `Someday I'm going to come down and do something really big.' "
Richman said the area was not identified as an ancient landslide until 1950, several years after the railroad made the cut. He said the property owners are asking the company to be responsible for action taken when experts did not know it was improper to cut the toe of landslides. He said the slide occurred because of immense precipitation in 1983 and the four previous years.
"The slide came down in the past without the help of man, it was going to come down at this time with the amount of moisture we had," Richman said.
The trial is expected to last through next week. Richman is expected to have experts testify that the slide was triggered by water buildup at the top.