{"id":50450,"date":"2020-11-13T16:33:16","date_gmt":"2020-11-13T23:33:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trial-accusing-durango-railroad-of-starting-416-fire-to-take-place-in-denver\/"},"modified":"2020-11-13T23:33:16","modified_gmt":"2020-11-13T23:33:16","slug":"trial-accusing-durango-railroad-of-starting-416-fire-to-take-place-in-denver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/trial-accusing-durango-railroad-of-starting-416-fire-to-take-place-in-denver\/","title":{"rendered":"Trial accusing Durango railroad of starting 416 Fire to take place in Denver"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"A
A federal judge has ruled that a trial, in which the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad is accused of starting the 416 Fire, will take place in Denver.<\/span>Durango Herald file<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

A federal judge has ruled that a trial in which the U.S. government seeks to recover an estimated $25 million from the Durango & Silverton Narrow Gauge Railroad for fighting the 416 Fire will take place in Denver.<\/p>\n

U.S. District Judge Robert E. Blackburn issued an order this week for a jury trial to start Sept. 13, 2021, at the Alfred A. Arraj U.S. Courthouse in Denver.<\/p>\n

The U.S. government filed the lawsuit in July 2019<\/a>, one year after the fire, alleging a cinder emitted from a locomotive started the wildfire, which burned an estimated 54,000 acres north of Durango.<\/p>\n

The D&SNG, for its part, has denied it started the wildfire, and in recent weeks, its lawyers have pushed for the trial to be held in Durango. The D&SNG\u2019s attorney, Richard Waltz, declined to comment.<\/p>\n

\u201cConducting the trial in Durango is appropriate as it would allow the citizens of the area affected by the 416 Fire to serve as jurors and hear this matter,\u201d the D&SNG attorneys wrote in a Sept. 16 court filing.<\/p>\n

The D&SNG\u2019s attorneys also noted it would be more convenient to hold the trial in Durango because most witnesses live here.<\/p>\n

On Oct. 14, U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn filed a response that said, given the current uncertainties surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic in terms of holding trials, the court should wait to determine where the trial will be located.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is uncertain when trial in this matter will take place,\u201d Dunn wrote. \u201cMoreover, given the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, trial may be delayed until as late as 2022.\u201d<\/p>\n

Jeffery Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Department of Justice, declined to comment.<\/p>\n

Judge Blackburn did not issue an explanation in his order for why the trial will be held in Denver. A request for comment to the courts was not returned.<\/p>\n

jromeo@durangoherald.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

D&SNG attorneys pushed to have hearings held locally<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":50451,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[2838,133,170,28,884,549,84],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-50450","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-416-fire","tag-courts","tag-durango-and-silverton-narrow-gauge-railroad-co","tag-headlines","tag-hermosa","tag-united-states-forest-service","tag-wildfire"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50450","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=50450"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/50450\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/50451"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=50450"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=50450"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=50450"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=50450"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}