CHICAGO (Sun-Times Media Wire) -
A train derailed on the Northbrook-Glenview border on the Fourth of July, right around the corner from where some of Michael LaMonica's friends lived.
LaMonica saw on the news how the cars tumbled off the tracks, collapsing a bridge over Shermer Road.
No one was hurt, the railroad announced, amid the heaps of metal, concrete and coal clogging the underpass.
All the same, LaMonica said Friday, he called Burt Lindner on Thursday morning, an hour after the attorney would usually have shown up to the office space they shared.
"I called him, half-joking," LaMonica told reporters Friday, yards from piles of track slices and metal train wheels. "Hey Burt, you sleeping in? Give me a call."
It would be hours before LaMonica would learn that his friend and his wife had been killed in that horrible wreck.
Burton Lindner, 69, and his wife of nearly 47 years, Zorine, 70, were pulled out of the debris of train cars, rails and bridge debris 17 hours after some 28 Union Pacific train cars jumped the tracks near Willow Road on Wednesday afternoon and mangled the couples's black Lexus as it drove under the viaduct.
"I thought he'd make fun of me for even calling to check on him," LaMonica said of his mentor and first boss. "He was such an easy-going, great guy."
LaMonica filed a wrongful death lawsuit Friday morning in Cook County Circuit Court on behalf of the couple's elder son, Robert Lindner, and asked a judge to bar Union Pacific from doing any more work at the crash site and requiring the company to preserve all evidence already collected, Sun-Times Media is reporting.
Judge William Maddux signed the order stopping the cleanup until 11 p.m. Saturday.
By the time he did, temporary tracks had already been laid; and the viaduct over Shermer Road had been filled in with gravel.
"Union Pacific has already created a makeshift bridge and already has trains going over this spot," LaMonica said Friday afternoon a few hundred feet from the crash, where chewed-up rail cars remained in a pile.
"Which shows you they're more interested in having their business carry on the day after this tragedy than they are allowing a real, thorough investigation to determine why these two amazing lives were taken."
Union Pacific spokesman Tom Lange said all trains, operations and cleanup at the site stopped after the company received the order.
The lawsuit claims Union Pacific was negligent by not keeping its viaducts and tracks safe.
Union Pacific failed to properly build and repair its tracks near the viaduct and failed to take notice of "dangerous and safe operating conditions," the suit said.
The suit also alleges the railroad "negligently conducted' an inadequate inspection of the track. The railroad has previously said the tracks were inspected the day of the accident because of possible effects on the rails of the extreme heat that day.
Union Pacific officials said their train derailed before the viaduct collapsed. The massive weight of the cars cascading onto the pileup was more than the bridge was designed to handle, they said. Wednesday's intense heat could have made the steel rails expand, causing the derailment and subsequent bridge collapse, the railroad said.
Both the railroad and the Federal Railroad Administration are investigating the accident.
"We're here to get some answers as to why something this tragic happened," LaMonica said. "And we refuse to accept the fact that it was hot outside so a train went flying off the track, because that's unacceptable."
It was more than 100 degrees on Wednesday. The couple's sons and wives and children were out of town so the pair had the holiday to themselves, LaMonica said. Burt talked about going to the Botanical Gardens if it didn't get too hot, then out to dinner with his wife.
They didn't get far. Just outside the Princeton Village gated community where they'd lived for many years, driving south on Shermer Road, they were crushed.
It was the same spot where an 18-car Canadian Pacific freight train had derailed in 2009, causing an evacuation of the immediate area but injuring no one. And it was the same bridge that was closed for three months just last year while it was rehabbed.
On Friday, the attorneys begged privacy for the Lindner family to grieve together, not wanting to be found while they planned a double funeral for Sunday at a Deerfield temple, and the sons identified their parents' bodies at the Cook County Medical Examiner's office.
