Sovereign immunity (“The king can do no wrong”) is a medieval legal doctrine that holds that a sovereign cannot be sued without its consent. By signing the interstate compact that created the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority, the courts have ruled, Virginia, Maryland and the District of Columbia transferred their own sovereign immunity to WMATA. So in most cases, Metro can’t be sued for negligence even when it’s clearly at fault.
There are exceptions. In January, Metro agreed to pay $1.6 million to settle just 84 claims from the 2009 Red Line crash that killed nine people and injured dozens more. Payments to those victims ranged from $333 to $150,000 after the National Transportation Safety Board found Metro at fault for ignoring numerous warnings that its automated track circuits were malfunctioning. Metro has paid millions more to others injured in the accident, but the details of those settlements are under seal. Metro has been operating on herky-jerky manual mode ever since.
