More than two years after a train laden with crude oil derailed in Canada, killing 47 people and destroying part of a small town in Quebec, a U.S. judge approved the railway’s multimillion-dollar bankruptcy-exit plan and cleared the way for victims to begin receiving payment from a $343 million fund, the Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Bankruptcy Judge Peter G. Cary on Friday approved Montreal, Maine & Atlantic Railway’s bankruptcy-exit plan, a day after a Canadian judge gave it conditional approval. The plan earmarks about $86 million for the families of those who died in the explosive crash in the town of Lac-Mégantic. The railway is now defunct, its assets sold off as part of the bankruptcy case, but the remnants of the company under the control of Robert Keach, the bankruptcy trustee in the U.S. case, have been working with parties on both sides of the border on a compensation plan for victims and creditors.
