(The following article by Fred Leeson was posted on the Oregonian website on November 13.)
PORTLAND, Ore. — Irritated by noisy late-night railroad operations, residents of two Southeast Portland neighborhoods want to revive a 47-year-old court case to seek damages against Union Pacific Railroad.
Pleadings filed in U.S. District Court on Wednesday ask for $1 million in damages against the railroad for alleged violations of a 1956 injunction that established operating regulations for a stretch of tracks along Southeast McLoughlin Boulevard south of Reedway Street.
In addition, the Eastmoreland Neighborhood Association and the Sellwood-Moreland Improvement League ask that ownership of certain tracks be deeded to them so that violations don’t occur again.
In negotiations held since 2001, the railroad has said that the 1956 injunction no longer applies or was superseded by later changes in interstate commerce regulations.
Responding to complaints about noise, a visiting federal judge in 1956 said that Southern Pacific Railroad, then the owner of the Southeast Portland tracks, could operate only “main line movement of trains” from approximately one-quarter of a mile south of Reedway Street.
Residents living on both sides of the tracks say that Southern Pacific honored the injunction until the late 1990s. But they said sudden, loud noises from rail cars being shunted among tracks as trains were broken down and reconstructed became worse after Union Pacific took over Southern Pacific in a merger.
Pleadings filed by Bruce Rubin, a Portland attorney representing the residents, ask that Union Pacific be held in contempt for violating the order. The residents contend that noise interrupts their sleep and damages their property values.
Jeffrey Kilmer, a Portland attorney representing the railroad, declined to comment. He said he had not had time to read the pleadings carefully.
In a letter written in May 2001, Carolyn Larson, an attorney in Kilmer’s firm, said terms of the 1956 injunction limited the length of trains in Brooklyn Yard to 6,700 feet.
“This restriction was probably immaterial in 1956 when trains were less than a mile long,” she wrote. “But today, when many trains are over 7,000 feet in length, the restriction unduly restricts interstate commerce.”
Rubin said if the railroad was dissatisfied with the 1956 restrictions, it should have asked the court for a modification. “As a lawyer, I believe you have an obligation to obey a court ruling,” he said. “You can’t decide for yourself that it makes no sense and start violating it.”