NOBLESVILLE, Ind. — An Indiana judge last Friday approved a class action settlement for more than 9,000 Indiana landowners with claims against CSX Railroad. According to lawyers for the landowners, the settlement will resolve all title claims between CSX and the landowners on both sides of 600 miles of abandoned railroad right-of-way in Indiana, and CSX will pay as much as $7 million dollars to the class members.
The settlement will resolve a 9-year-old class action that has twice gone to the Indiana Court of Appeals. The class action, named Clark, et al. v. CSX Transportation, Inc., was filed in Hamilton Superior Court in 1993, and Judge William J. Hughes certified the class action in 1994. In 1995 the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld that decision, explaining that the case was “based on CSX’s unreasonable refusal to acknowledge the extinguishment of abandoned right-of-ways (easements or lesser interests) throughout Indiana and CSX’s continued course of conduct in exercising dominion over these extinguished interests which has clouded the landowners’ title to abandoned railroad corridors.”
The Clark case was the first Indiana right-of-way class action to be certified and affirmed. It was also one of the first in the nation involving fiber optic cable and other unauthorized uses of abandoned railroad rights-of- way. As a result of discovering thousands of documents in the Clark case, landowners became aware of deals reached between CSX and certain telecommunications companies, such as AT&T and MCI WorldCom, to install fiber optic cable on both active and abandoned railroad corridors, as well as on pipelines and power lines. That knowledge gave rise to other multi-million dollar class actions against the major telecommunications companies, railroads, pipeline and power companies. A nationwide class action has been certified against AT&T, and several cases have been settled, including settlements with AT&T in Indiana, Ohio, Connecticut, Maine, New Hampshire and Arkansas. The same lawyers have represented the landowners in each of those cases.
Nels Ackerson, one of the lead attorneys for the class of landowners, explained, “This has been a very long and expensive battle for Indiana landowners. Finally they will be paid for the use of their land. Even more important to many landowners, the cloud on their title will be lifted, so they will finally have the full use and enjoyment of their property.”
Lead plaintiff George Clark said, “I am pleased that this lawsuit has finally been resolved in a way that compensates landowners like myself for all the trouble the railroad has put us through. At last they are doing the right thing. This is what we have been waiting for.”
Another class representative, Jim Crouch, of the Hamilton County Farm Bureau Co-Op, added, “I want to thank Nels Ackerson, Henry Price and others for seeing this lawsuit through to its fair conclusion. Landowners’ rights finally have been vindicated by this settlement.”
Indianapolis attorney Henry Price, another lead attorney for the plaintiffs, added, “This settlement achieves what we have been seeking all along for the landowners: just compensation for the use of their land, and resolution of all title claims between the landowners and CSX. Everyone has reason to be satisfied with this result.”
Final approval of the settlement is expected at a hearing in July, 2002, and before that time notice of the terms of settlement will be sent to class members.