The Fifth Estate Lac Megantic Rail Disaster: The Case Runner

In July 2013, a runaway train with more than seven million litres of volatile crude oil crashed in a small Quebec town, leaving part of Lac Megantic incinerated and 47 people dead. Soon after the crash – when many bodies were still being identified – lawyers from the United States turned up in town, offering to help families fight for compensation. Working with them behind the scenes was a shadowy Texan who has made a career out of turning disasters into dollars. He’s not a lawyer, but he has plenty of experience doing one thing: signing up victims of tragic accidents and referring them to law firms for a fee; a kind of ambulance chaser, or what’s called a “case runner.” It’s a practice that has grown so out of hand in Texas they made it illegal. But nothing stopped the Texan from making millions in Quebec. Working with colleagues from Radio-Canada’s Enquête program, Mark Kelley reports on The Case Runner.

• 2017
• 00:20:20
• 13-14
• Added on: 10/17/2017