The tiny railroad company that caused the Lac Megantic disaster is bankrupt; its insurance will not cover the damages.

This company is a piece of a business empire structured as many corporations with small assets. The apparent purpose of this structure is to save the empire as a whole from paying the damages for accidents such as this. It limits the liability to one small piece, which can go bankrupt in order to spare the empire as a whole. That this leaves the victims screwed is of no importance to the callous rich.

It resembles the strategy used by Peabody Energy which spun off a subsidiary containing its retired workers' pension obligations, so it would go bankrupt and screw those former workers.

This practice is lawful due to politicians and parties that have sold out to business. If they represented the people instead of the plutocrats, they would have adopted laws that hold the entire empire liable.