This is a place where American-Crapitalism / free-market capitalism / the invisible hand of the market cannot work to get the right answer.
It takes a legal framework and lots of experts and lawyers.
In a catastrophe like this ...
Norfolk Southern needs to minimize losses so it is to their benefit to go with the testing experts who report everything is fine.
Any testing company that wants repeat business with corporate America has incentives to deliver an outcome that NS likes.
The people will want to know their homes are safe so will be suspect of any test from an NS expert showing otherwise.
The people will hire experts and maybe a scammer or two who tell them the NS experts are wrong or lying.
Some experts will be legit. Some will be scammers in the business for a quick buck.
The experts on both sides have incentives to string out the issue as long as possible.
In the end ..
NS will pay a big chunk of money (they should).
Some people will never be satisfied.
The experts and the lawyers will make a shit-ton of money.
Life will go on.
Libertarians will keep telling us how the free hand of the market can solve all of our problems.
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