Union Pacific Response to Oxbow Lawsuit
Union Pacific has seen the antitrust complaint filed by Oxbow Carbon and its affiliated companies against Union Pacific. The complaint is not a surprise. Oxbow has long been threatening Union Pacific with litigation unless UP acceded to Oxbow’s demands for exceptional commercial concessions.
Union Pacific vigorously denies the allegations in the complaint. Union Pacific has not violated the antitrust laws. Also, Union Pacific has not conspired with any other railroad to fix prices or reduce competition for rail transportation of any customer or commodity.
Union Pacific values its business relationship with Oxbow and all customers. However, Oxbow’s complaint contains egregious misstatements of facts, erroneous accusations, and obvious misunderstandings of federal regulation, rail networks and markets. Many of Oxbow’s assertions about Union Pacific fuel surcharge practices simply paraphrase allegations that Union Pacific has already addressed in litigation dating back to 2007.
Oxbow’s lawsuit is a grab bag of accusations that mischaracterizes Union Pacific’s actions and efforts to compete fiercely for rail transportation business. Many of those accusations appear to simply repeat allegations made in a current Surface Transportation Board proceeding on rail competition. As Union Pacific has said in that proceeding and will demonstrate in response to Oxbow, we have made all decisions relating to competing for rail business and pricing our services to reflect the value they provide to our many customers, including coal customers like Oxbow, independently and in full compliance with the law. We intend to vigorously defend our actions against Oxbow’s allegations.
June 8, 2011