Her other lawyer, Christian D. Searcy, said he had even asked Amtrak officials to state in writing whether they had reimbursed CSX. "They said no letter will be forthcoming," Mr. Searcy said.

Mrs. Palank said the jury was never told that CSX would escape the sting of its verdict. "It's so secretive, so manipulative," she said. "Someone in the federal government needs to answer for this, because there was no legal justification for them to be paying for somebody else's wrongdoing."

Mark Geistfeld, a law professor at New York University, said indemnification, a form of insurance, has its limits. "Certainly, you cannot get insurance for criminal fines, for example," Professor Geistfeld said. "It's against public policy. No court would enforce it." But, whether Amtrak should have paid in this case depends on what kind of behavior you are talking about, he added.

Mr. Downs, the former Amtrak chief, said that after the railroad's lawyers told him Amtrak could not escape paying the punitive verdict, he called John Snow, then CSX's chief executive, to complain. Mr. Snow, now President Bush's treasury secretary, said in essence that a deal was a deal, Mr. Downs recalls. Mr. Snow declined to discuss the conversation or the case. CSX also declined to comment specifically on Amtrak's payment of punitive damages.

Amtrak's obligation did not end with the $63.8 million payment to Mrs. Palank, though. It was also responsible for $24 million in compensatory damages to her and other crash victims, for a total of $88 million. For causing the accident, CSX paid the Federal Railroad Administration the maximum fine -- $20,000.

"It's very difficult to convince railroads that the carrying of people has a higher standard of operating discipline and safety than, say, coal," Mr. Downs said. "And the reason I think that is, is that they are immune from any cost."

At about the same time that the Palank case was working its way through the courts, in fact, CSX was working on a different front to soften its litigation costs. It played a prominent role in a business coalition that helped persuade the Florida Legislature in 1999 to change liability laws in the state, imposing limits on punitive damages, for example.