COLUMBUS, Ohio (Legal Newsline) - The legal challenge of an Ohio law mandating every freight train must have at least a two-person crew is premature, state Attorney General Dave Yost is arguing.
Yost filed a motion to dismiss July 26 in Ohio federal court as the state handles a lawsuit from the Association of American Railroads, which argues the law is unconstitutional and preempted by the Federal Railroad Safety Act.
The case concerns the new Crew Size Law. The AAR seeks an injunction preventing the State from taking any action to enforce it.
"In fact, the Ohio Attorney General has no indepenent authority to enforce the challenged state law. (The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) must first find an individual railroad company in violation of the state law and then PUCO can ask the Ohio Attorney General to bring a collection action against the company for the violation," Yost's office wrote.
"The chain of events which needs to occur before the Ohio Attorney General is even implicated is too speculative to establish standing as to the Ohio Attorney General."
The lawsuit alleges that the Crew Size Law would subject railroad companies to "immediate" injury and by complying with the law, they would give up "their right under federal law to operate safely and efficiently, unencumbered by minimum-crew-size requirements."
The plaintiff claims that freight railroads have used one-person crews safely in a variety of situations, particularly in "remotely controlled locomotive operations," and that single-person trains are just as safe as multiple-person operations, according to accident data.
Those arguments are not yet addressed by Yost, who instead is currently focused on whether the AAR has standing to bring a pre-enforcement action against his office.
"Plaintiff has not sufficiently alleged that any of its members have suffered a concrete injury-in-fact as it relates to the Attorney General," his motion to dismiss says.
"The only alleged injury is that Plaintiff's 'members face the immediate or threatened injury' of enforcement actions... But any such action by the Attorney General is entirely speculative."
For the challenge to be timely, a company must violate the Crew Size Law, PUCO would have to find it willfully violated it, PUCO would have to assess a civil penalty, the company would have to refuse to pay and PCO would have to request the AG bring a civil collection action, Yost says.