(The following story by Chris Norwood appeared on the Daily Home website on October 3.)
TALLADEGA, Ala. — The City Council explored the possibility Monday night of contacting the Alabama League of Municipalities to instigate a class action lawsuit against CSX and other railroad companies for persistent failure to properly maintain their crossings.
The discussion began during a pre-council meeting, when citizen James Anderson asked the council why nothing had been done at the crossing in spite of months of discussion.
“We’ve been talking about this for at least four years,” Councilman William Clark said, “and so far, all we’ve gotten is lip service.”
“We have our attorneys working on this,” city manager Sue Horn said, “and we’ve had them write letters at least five different times. Alabama Eastern actually did clean up their tracks in Bemiston, but CSX usually doesn’t even bother to respond. I know they were having similar problems in Sylacauga, but the city finally did get permission to go in and mill down the lip of the crossings. I’ll be checking with them to see how they did that, but my understanding is even that took years.
“If we go in and clean up behind them, we will charge them for it,” Horn said.
Council President Charles Pope said while the milling in Sylacauga did help some, “it’s still pretty rough going into downtown.”
Councilman Dr. Horace Patterson first raised the issue of litigation Monday.
“This has been going on for a lot of years,” he said. “If other cities are having the same problem, we need to contact the League and look at the possibility of a class action lawsuit. If we go through the League, we can line up as many partners as we can. But we are clearly dealing with a sense of arrogance here. Our problem is that there have never been any consequences.”
Horn pointed out that former city manager Thomas Christie and Police Chief Alan Watson had both approached CSX in the past, “but they were always told the railroads had special laws that pre-empted anything the city could do. We actually did cite them once, but the court dismissed it on a promise that they would clean up their crossings,” Horn said. “Then they never did anything.”
The council had previously asked Horn to try and find an attorney who specialized in working with railroads on behalf of government agencies, but she was unsuccessful in finding anyone.
Councilman James Armstrong said he is serving on a statewide committee that is proposing legislation to address railroad problems, but since he was not re-elected, he said he would be recommending someone to replace him and carry the proposal forward.