(The following article by Harvey Rice was posted on the Houston Chronicle website on July 9.)
HOUSTON — Disgraced former leaders of the nation’s largest railroad operating union described a system controlled by corrupt lawyers during a sentencing hearing Friday in a Houston federal court.
Two ex-presidents of the United Transportation Union were sentenced to two years in prison for accepting bribes from lawyers in exchange for access to workers injured on the job.
Two other union officials were sentenced to three years’ probation after all four pleaded guilty to a charge of conspiracy. Other counts in the September 2003 indictment were dropped in exchange for their cooperation in an ongoing investigation.
U.S. District Judge Sim Lake also ordered former international presidents Charles Leonard Little, 69, of Leander, and Byron Alfred Boyd Jr., 57, of Seattle to pay a $10,000 fine and a $100,000 forfeiture.
Boyd, who resigned his post after his indictment, described a union system controlled by lawyers who paid as much as $30,000 to be on a list giving them access to injured union members.
“The system has gone on for generations, and the system goes on as we stand here today,” Boyd said.
Lake sentenced Ralph John Dennis, 51, of Boone, Iowa, former union director of insurance, and John Russell Rookard, 57, of Olalla, Wash., Boyd’s assistant, to three years’ probation and a $45,000 forfeiture. He fined Dennis $2,000.
Lake said there appears to be a problem with the system that criminal prosecution could not cure.
Lake asked Assistant U.S. Attorney Edward Gallagher whether his office had sought help from legislators in changing the law.
Gallagher, saying lawmakers had been consulted, said the corruption went back to the 1908 passage of the Federal Employers Liability Act, allowing unlimited damages for injured railroad workers because their jobs are so hazardous.
He told Lake that so many lawyers wanted to represent those workers that they were willing to bribe union officials.
Gallagher was referring to lawyers designated by the UTU president as legal counsel with honorary union membership. Although any lawyer can represent an injured union member, those on the designated counsel list had the union’s imprimatur and easier access.
The probe began in 1999 after El Paso lawyer Victor Biegnowski was accused of insurance fraud.
Biegnowski, a UTU designated counsel, offered information to prosecutors about the bribery.
Lawyers involved in the scheme were given immunity for their cooperation in prosecuting the four union members.
“Had it been reversed, it might have been 35 lawyers before us today,” Gallagher told Lake.
But Little’s attorney, David Gerger, contended that “the people who benefited financially the most have never been prosecuted and never will be prosecuted.”
Gerger said some lawyers involved in the scam are still designated counsels with the union. Gallagher responded that the government is pursuing noncriminal action against them, including disbarment.
Of the 56 designated counsels at the time the union officials were indicted in September 2003, six were in Texas and five in the Houston area.