A group of victims of the Line 12 tragedy takes their claim for justice to the New York courts

Rescue teams in the collapse zone on Line 12 of the Mexico City metro, on May 3, 2021. Jair Cabrera (Getty Images)

A group of 14 direct victims and relatives affected by the Mexico City subway tragedy have decided to seek justice in the United States.

This was announced this Tuesday by his lawyers at a press conference held a few days after the one year anniversary of the collapse of an elevated section of Line 12, which left 26 dead and around a hundred injured people.

This is a civil lawsuit filed before the Supreme Court of the State of New York against the consortium of companies that built the line: Civil Engineers and Associates (ICA), Alstom and CAF.

The legal representatives have also confirmed that they signed a confidential reparation agreement with the billionaire Carlos Slim's Grupo Carso and that, therefore, they will desist from new legal proceedings against that powerful conglomerate.

The advisors have also filed a mirror lawsuit before the Prosecutor's Office of the Mexican capital against the construction companies for the crimes of injury and wrongful death, as well as an administrative appeal against the capital's government and several of its dependencies to claim compensation in the order of dozens of millions of pesos.

"This matter is not over yet," warned lawyer Cristopher Estupiñán, "we are going to continue the battle."

And the fight will be on several fronts.

The lawyer Cristopher Estupiñán has warned, “we are going to continue with the battle”.

And the fight will be on several fronts.

The lawyer Cristopher Estupiñán has warned, “we are going to continue with the battle”.

And the fight will be on several fronts.

The argument to put the construction companies on the defendant's bench is the "negligence" claimed by the legal team that advises the victims.

Estupiñán has claimed that there is "collusion" between the authorities and Grupo ICA, the company that assumed the largest percentage of the construction of Line 12, to prevent them from facing justice.

No private company has yet been charged in Mexico for the May 3, 2021 incident. The events obviously took place in Mexican territory, but the lawyers will seek to demonstrate that the case can be tried in the United States because the companies have domiciles in that country.

The legal representatives confess that one of the main unknowns is that a US court declares itself competent to resolve the case,

The lawsuit filed in New York by a group of victims of Line 12 of the Mexico City subway. COURTESY

The civil lawsuit in New York, filed since last February, accuses Alstom of being in charge of the installation and electrification of the tracks.

The Spanish Grupo CAF was in charge of manufacturing the subway cars on that line.

Grupo ICA was primarily responsible for the civil engineering work and construction, according to the document.

"As a result of ICA's negligence, the plaintiffs suffered serious, severe and permanent injuries, as well as disabilities and even death," the complaint claims.

"Line 12 was unsafe in that the elevated section through which the rail transport passed could not support the weight of the wagons and was defectively designed and/or built," the plaintiffs assert.

ICA won the tender for section 4 of the Mayan Train,

one of the flagship projects of the Government of Andrés Manuel López Obrador.

The section goes from Izamal (Yucatán) to Cancún and has a planned investment of 25,000 million pesos (1,200 million dollars).

Carso will build section 2 of the megaproject, with a budget of 18,500 million pesos.

At first, the legal team of the victims also sought to sue Grupo Carso, in charge of the construction of the elevated viaduct of the line, and they were for months in a tug-of-war with the authorities of Mexico City to sign the agreements. reparations that exempted the Slim consortium from any responsibility for what happened.

The lawyers believed that the proposed damages were insufficient.

EL PAÍS had access to one of the agreements offered by Carso, in which 450,000 pesos (just over 21,000 dollars) were paid to one of the people injured in the incident.

After little more than a month of negotiations, Carso eventually agreed to pay a larger repair for the damage to shield himself from future lawsuits and legal claims.

The lawyers have not revealed the amounts, but say that in some cases there was a 250% increase in the amounts originally offered to people who were injured.

They have not been clear about whether these new legal agreements also exempted the company from liability, but they have said that there is a clause that allows them to continue the legal battle against the other companies regardless of the agreement they have already reached with Carso.

"We reached an agreement with Carso because it was the only company that had the moral decency to appear before the victims," ​​said Estupiñán, adding that the victims have already been paid.

"We are happy, but there is still a long way to go," said the lawyer.

"The Prosecutor's Office has been and continues to be remiss in opening a specific line of investigation against the companies," he has claimed.

On the administrative front, the legal office has also required the Comptroller of the local Government to open a process against the Head of Government, the Ministry of Works, Mobility and Civil Protection, as well as against the Collective Transportation System-Metro to define responsibilities for service failures that led to the collapse.

In this case, a patrimonial reparation is sought for each of the victims as compensation.

This week the first request for patrimonial reparation was presented for an amount of 110 million pesos (5.4 million dollars).

Those claiming that money are four relatives of a victim who died in the collapse.

The sum concentrates the damages for the death, as well as the damages derived against the family.

The lawyers will present an appeal for each affected family nucleus, either due to injuries or the death of one of its members.

"The Government of Mexico City had to have detected these flaws and should have corrected them," said lawyer Miguel Alcalde.

The lawyer has said that the administrative investigations can be extended both to officials of the Claudia Sheinbaum Administration, as well as to her predecessors, Miguel Ángel Mancera (opposition senator) and Marcelo Ebrard (foreign minister).

In the event that the Comptroller's Office, ultimately dependent on the local Executive, does not resolve in their favor, the lawyers plan to take the claim to the Administrative Justice Court or to a circuit court, part of the Judicial Power of the Federation.

It remains to be seen if the strategy of seeking compensation on several fronts works and how the investigation by the Prosecutor's Office will progress.

Apart from this claim, 10 former officials have been charged with injuries, property damage and manslaughter, in a tragedy that shook the country, but for which there is still no legal responsibility.

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