Rail operator owes $400M for trespassing on Native American land

• BNSF Railway committed "willful, conscious and knowing trespass" onto land belonging to Washington state's Swinomish Indian Tribal Community for nearly a decade, according to court documents filed Monday in U.S. District Court in Seattle.

Flashback: BNSF Railway had a 1991 agreement with the tribe that allowed trains crossing through the tribe's territory to carry no more than 25 cars per day, per AP.

• The tribe filed a lawsuit against BNSF in 2015 after BNSF Railway increased the number of cars it was sending without the tribe's permission.
• A federal judge ruled last year that the rail operator violated the agreement by repeatedly allowing 100-car trains carrying crude oil to travel across the reservation between September 2012 to May 2021.

State of play: A trial held earlier this month to decide the damages the rail operator should pay determined that it would be required to pay the net profits gained through its trespassing, per the court documents.

• The resulting sum amounted to more than $394.5 million.

• "We know that this is a large amount of money. But that just reflects the enormous wrongful profits that BNSF gained by using the Tribe's land day after day, week after week, year after year over our objections," Steve Edwards, chairman of the Swinomish Indian Tribal Community, said in a statement, AP reported.
• BNSF Railway told Axios it had no comment on the matter.

Editor's note: This story was updated with a response from BNSF Railway.