Massive rail freight price-fixing suit gets class certification
by CanadianManufacturing.com Staff
The four largest rail firms in the U.S. are named
NEW YORK—The U.S. District Court of Columbia has granted class certification to a lawsuit alleging four U.S. rail companies conspired to fix the prices of rail fuel surcharges from mid-2003 until 2008.
The companies named in the suit are BNSF Railway, Union Pacific Railroad, Norfolk Southern Railway and CSX Transportation.
The suit was filed by eight shipping firms which claim they were subjected to “an endless string of rate increases…made possible by a concentrated market structure, tight capacity and coordinated pricing, which bore no direct relationship to their actual fuel cost increases.
The original lawsuits in this case were filed in 2007, when 18 similar lawsuits were combined into the consolidated Multi District Litigation.
