Railroad Surcharge

This is an antitrust litigation proceeding in the United States District Court for the District of Columbia involving four United States-based Class 1 railroads and allegations of price fixing in violation of Section 1 of the Sherman Act and violations of state antitrust and state consumer protection laws. Plaintiffs allege that the railroads, beginning in July 2003 conspired to fix, raise, maintain or stabilize the prices of rail freight transportation services within the United States through the use of Rail Freight Surcharges that were added to customers’ bills. This surcharge was separately, and falsely, identified as a fee to compensate for increases in the cost of fuel for the agreed-upon transportation.

Plaintiffs allege that the defendants conspired together to use an artificially high surcharge to cover fuel costs as a means to raise rates and to increase profits. The defendants were able to maintain the conspiracy to uniformly computing surcharges as a percentage of the rail freight transport base and by agreeing upon common points for adjusting these percentages. As a result of these actions, the plaintiffs have paid a higher price for freight transportation.