Woman missed her Sounder stop after onboard seizure. How her lawsuit ended
A woman who passed out on Sound Transit’s Sounder after a medical event and awoke to find herself trapped on the train in an overnight railyard has resolved a lawsuit she filed against the transportation agency, court records show.
The case was dismissed on May 2 under a mutual agreement, according to a court filing, although it wasn’t specifically expressed that the matter had reached a formal settlement and, if so, for how much.
“I can tell you that it resolved to the satisfaction of both parties,” attorney Mark O’Halloran, who represented the woman, said in an interview Tuesday.
Sound Transit spokesman David Jackson declined to comment Tuesday but noted that a second defendant — contractor Securitas Security Services — would bear any financial responsibility associated with the case’s closure, in response to a question about how much the transportation agency would pay.
“Securitas is responsible for any settlement costs,” Jackson wrote in an email.
Messages left for Securitas and two attorneys representing the company in the lawsuit were not immediately returned.
Chelsey James boarded the train in Seattle in July 2021 headed for home in Puyallup but missed her stop after she suffered at least one seizure and passed out along the way, according to the lawsuit filed in March 2024. Upon waking up, James was locked on the parked train at Sound Transit’s Century Yard in Lakewood, where the agency stores trains overnight for cleaning and light maintenance.
James, who was expected to arrive in Puyallup at 5 p.m., was discovered by a conductor from a different train between 6 and 6:30 p.m., according to internal agency records previously provided by her legal counsel to The News Tribune. Her phone was stolen while she was unconscious, the suit said.
The complaint alleged that Sound Transit and contractor Securitas Security Services were negligent and failed to follow policies requiring a routine sweep for any remaining passengers at Lakewood Station, which is the final stop before the Century Yard.
In a court-filed response to the lawsuit last year, Sound Transit denied wrongdoing. The public agency argued that any damages were caused by James’ own negligence or through the fault of others and that she had assumed the risk associated with her actions, a court filing shows. Securitas also rejected liability in a separate filing.
“Securitas complied with the generally accepted standard of care applicable to it under the same or similar circumstances at that time and, as a result, is in no way liable for the matters set forth in Plaintiffs’ Amended Complaint,” the company wrote in a court filing.
The security officer responsible for the sweep had documented in an incident report that he thoroughly inspected the train and didn’t locate anyone, according to a copy of his report previously obtained by The News Tribune.
Last year, O’Halloran said in an interview that it would have required only “a modicum of diligence” to notice James, who was 31 at the time the lawsuit was filed.
James had four observed seizures while speaking with a train conductor and a different security officer after being found, according to the suit. She and her husband, who learned what happened from Sound Transit and arrived at the layover yard shortly before 7:30 p.m., denied offers for immediate medical attention, but James later received treatment, O’Halloran previously said.
Prior to learning of his wife’s whereabouts, James’ husband had become concerned after he called her several times to no avail and followed a locator ping to Graham, where he confronted a man at a home who had claimed he found James’ phone on the train, O’Halloran previously said. No police report was ever filed as far as O’Halloran knew, he said.
In 2018, a woman fell asleep on a southbound train to Lakewood and also woke up in the layover yard, which is about a mile from the Lakewood Station, KING 5 previously reported. Sound Transit acknowledged at the time that the woman’s car had gone unchecked during a sweep and that it was working with its contractor to ensure the error wouldn’t be repeated, according to the news outlet.
