A Florida judge has dismissed a lawsuit that three CSX shareholders had filed last summer against the carrier regarding the 2017 hiring of late CEO E. Hunter Harrison.
The matter was settled by Virginia state law, which required that the suit be dismissed after a committee of “disinterested” CSX board members determined that the suit, which involved the company suing itself, should not go forward.
The shareholders who filed the lawsuit, John Robertson, James Ekis and George Triefenbach, have the option of filing an amended derivative complaint 30 days after the June 3 dismissal by Judge Kevin Blasz of Florida’s Fourth Judicial Circuit Court.
For more background, see this previous story.
Tag: CSX CEO E. Hunter Harrison
The Surface Transportation Board (STB) chairwoman has asked Norfolk Southern’s CEO to keep the board apprised as the carrier begins to add elements of Precision Scheduled Railroading (PSR) to its operations, Trains Magazine reports.
The letter from Ann Begeman, sent Nov. 27 to NS CEO Jim Squires, requests that the carrier begin weekly conference calls with the STB to report operational changes, the magazine reported in an article posted Nov. 29.
The requirement of updates from NS mirrors the approach STB has taken in handling another Class I that is trying out PSR.
Union Pacific (UP) announced in early autumn that it also had begun adopting aspects of PSR as part of its “Unified Plan 2020” initiative. PSR is a strategy by the late CSX CEO E. Hunter Harrison that he implemented at both Canadian National and Canadian Pacific and requires cargo to be ready when rail cars arrive for loading or risk being left behind, among other aspects. Both Canadian carriers reported financial benefits after these implementations.
When Harrison moved to CSX in early 2017 and began adding PSR to that carrier’s operations, CSX received substantial criticism from shippers amid reports of service problems as the year progressed. This drew the attention of STB and resulted in a hearing before the STB to address the carrier’s difficulties.
To avoid a repeat of those problems encountered by CSX, a letter from the STB sent in September to UP sought weekly updates on the implementation.
CSX CEO E. Hunter Harrison, 73, has died just two days after CSX announced that he was going on medical leave due to complications from an illness.
CSX’s chairman of the board of directors, Edward J. Kelly III said on behalf of the board: “With the passing of Hunter Harrison, CSX has suffered a major loss. Notwithstanding that loss, the board is confident that Jim Foote, as acting chief executive officer, and the rest of the CSX team will capitalize on the changes that Hunter has made. The board will continue to consider in a deliberative way how best to maximize CSX’s performance over the long term.”