A suit lodged by a woman injured during the New Jersey Transit train crash at the Hoboken Terminal three years ago settled for $1.5 million recently.

The case, Story v. NJ Transit, stemmed from the Sept. 29, 2016, train crash into the Hoboken Terminal. Plaintiff Latonya Story was seated in the last car when the train crashed into the platform during its arrival at the terminal.

The derailment injured several dozen others and killed a young mother: Fabiola Bittar de Kroon, 34, a lawyer who had moved from Santos, Brazil, a year earlier. News accounts and an investigation described that Train 1614 sped into the station at twice the speed limit that morning, and slammed into the backstop and caused part of the train shed's glass ceiling to collapse. Kroon was standing on the platform when a rain of debris fell on her, trapping and killing her.

Officials said the engineer, Thomas Gallagher, 48, was diagnosed with sleep apnea after the crash. Kroon's family filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the transit agency seeking unspecified compensatory damages in June 2017 in state Superior Court in Hudson County. The case remains in litigation.

Gallagher is listed in Story's complaint as responsible for the crash.

Story, 42 at the time of the accident, worked full time as an executive assistant, making approximately $75,000 per year. She lived in Rockland County, New York, and boarded the train to Hoboken Terminal each morning to get to work, according to her lawyers, Arthur Lynch and Brian Held of the Lynch Law Firm in Hasbrouck Heights..

She had been diagnosed with chronic neutropenia, a blood disorder affecting her white blood cells. Because of the autoimmune disease, Story has too few neutrophils, which are a type of white blood cell. Story's white blood cell disorder can manifest itself with fevers, night sweats, chills, sores, and fatigue and makes it much more difficult to fight diseases, virus, and bacteria, according to the suit.

To treat the condition, Story would receive occasional injections from her physician to help her bone marrow produce white blood cells. The recovery from the injections would cause Story to lose a day or two from work, or she would work from home on the following day, the suit claimed.

Despite that, Story could go up to a year without having these injections, and she never had any prior neck or shoulder pain before the train accident, according to her lawyers. And the neutropenia greatly affected Story's ability to heal from the train accident, they said.

The suit claimed the accident exacerbated her condition, and that she sustained several spinal injuries: disc displacements at C2-C3 and C3-C4; disc herniation at L4-L5; disc displacement at L5-S1; and left posterior annular tears at L4-L5 and L5-S1. The suit also claimed emotional distress.

Story incurred medical bills totaling $79,957.78, according to Lynch.

Her injuries led to a significant pain syndrome and had a catastrophic effect on her life, she claimed. Story said she became permanently disabled and will require extensive medical care and monitoring for the rest of her life.

"It's an unusual situation because she was gainfully employed and working full time, and now she can't," Lynch said in a phone call. "That's really what it's about."

"It became worse because she does not heal like a normal person," added Lynch. "It's a healing issue that she runs into. That's the main crux of the problem."

"The fact she will not be able to work is the biggest thing. There is a mental component to that. You get depressed because you don't feel fulfilled," Lynch said.

The parties settled with help from Alexander Carver of Harwood Lloyd in Hackensack, a retired Bergen County Superior Court judge, on Oct. 29.

MTA Metro-North Railroad, a subsidiary of New York State's Metropolitan Transportation Authority, is covering the entire $1.5 million settlement.

Defendant NJ Transit was represented by Vince Maynard of Landman Corci Ballaine & Ford in Philadelphia. Maynard said he had no comment on behalf of his client.

The settlement came shortly before the Senate Select Committee on NJ Transit's first public hearing, held at the Historic Waiting Room at Hoboken Terminal on Wednesday. The committee took testimony from transit bus, rail, and light rail riders concerning the quality of services and rider concerns.

The panel, formed earlier this year, is chaired by Senate President Steve Sweeney, D-Gloucester. Deputy Majority Leader Sandra Cunningham, D-Hudson, referenced the deadly Hoboken Terminal crash as among the reasons for the need to investigate NJ Transit when the creation of the new committee was announced.

The panel plans to hold additional public hearings and roundtables, and conduct site visits, and will be charged with developing a plan of action to turn around the embattled agency,

"NJ Transit continues to struggle with service delays, breakdowns and cancellations, and these problems are made worse by labor shortages and underfunding," Sweeney said in a statement after Wednesday night's hearing. "These problems are not new, but it is all too clear that they haven't been solved and there has been too little progress."

"Our goal is not to cast blame, it is to identify the problems and develop an action plan to make sure that NJ Transit is operating like a top flight agency that serves the needs of its passengers. This hearing has provided valuable input," Sweeney said.