Today the United States Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit heard oral arguments in the case of Lackawanna Chapter of the Railway & Locomotive Historical Society v. Saint Louis County, Missouri This division of the Eighth Circuit sat at Saint Louis University School of Law instead of the usual location of the Eagleton Courthouse downtown. The three judge panel was Judge Murphy, Judge Bright, and Judge Benton.

Unfortunately, I did not directly witness the oral arguments. Both sides were granted 15 minutes, however it was the first case on the docket and I was downstairs in my Equitable Remedies class. My professor has a strict attendance policy, so I decided for my own sake of not rocking the boat 5 weeks before graduation to head up. I did have some of my astute friends attend the oral argument session, and a report to follow. Frankly, it is one of the ironies of law school, that I would get docked points for going to see some real-world legal action where I may actually learn something practical. Oh well.

Just a reminder, if the Circuit Court overturns the lower court in granting summary judgment to Saint Louis County, will just remand the case back to the lower court. Saint Louis County can still win, and the R&LHS chapter could still loose. All the court is to decide if summary (early) judgment was correct. We will see.

Can anyone total how much this foolishness has cost so far? Scarce funds that could have been spent on restoring something...

I have heard that some of the same NJ participants in this action are supposedly prepping to get into a legal battle in NJ over some property which is currently under Farmland or Green Acres Preservation. The players want to property to be transformed into a museum site.

To me, its a darn shame and total waste of money and time at this point.

I believe that the legal fees from the Chapters Scranton,Pa. based law firm have totalled approx. $25,000 so far and if the case ends up going to a trial then the total will be higher and perhaps a lot higher depending on the amount of depositions,length of trial etc.
On the museums side being a publically owned entity I don't know if they even break out what they've spent???
I'd agree that the money could have been better spent elsewhere!
Ross Rowland

From my understanding, the litigation on behalf of Saint Louis County is being handled by the County Counselor's office, which is basically an in-house law firm that represents the County in civil matters. Since the costs are internal, it would be hard to figure out how much it costs to defend this action. They may actually “bill” the museum as some government entities do, or they may not. I simply do not know. Then again, this takes away time and resources the County Counselor's office could spend on other cases, matters.

If this were to go to a full-blown trial and appeals, then the costs would rapidly escalate. Litigation isn't cheap. Depositions, exhibits, expert witnesses and hundreds if not thousands of hours preparing the case for trial all cost money. If the $25,000 amount that Mr. Rowland quoted is accurate, that would have gone a long way to stabilizing and preserving the Delaware Water Gap depot or other projects.

The preceding comments are the personal opinion of the poster and the poster alone. The comments should not be construed as an official representation or declaration on behalf of anyone else, including Saint Louis County, the Saint Louis County Parks Department, the Museum of Transportation, or the Transportation Museum Association.

I've been informed back channel that my posted estimate of $ 25,000 was a bit low and that the actual figure is slightly north of $30,000.
I'm also told that they intend to persue the matter as far as the decisions of the Court allow,wherever that takes the matter.
This could end up being VERY costly for all concerned.
Ross Rowland

Money that could have been MUCH better spent on the poor 565 in Scranton or any DL&W piece in need of TLC. This could have also resulted in better relations with St. Louis for bringing 952 east temporarily or permanently.

Stupid, stupid, stupid.

Joshua

In Illinois, the farmer is not paid market value, but an agreed upon amount over and above the value of land for agricultural use. This represents the premium being paid for development rights.

So if farm land goes for maybe 12K per acre and a home builder is willing to pay 35K to subdivide and build upon the site, the farmer would get 23K and still own the land to farm it.

I think it is a good program and it goes under various conservation related titles. And yes, anyone returning the premium and trying to break that trust, would throw the whole program into disarray.

So what would you do with the 30K now lining lawyers pockets? Maybe buy that acre of land somewhere to store and hopefully house your equipment, even if inside a rather primitive shelter? Must be some big EGOS involved in this.


Bob Kutella

Ross,

While I cannot speak for the museum, I can say that the scope of MOT's collection is national in scope. Since the museum isn't a regional museum, and one of the focuses of the collection is the technological development ofthe steam engine, a Camelback like the 952 is germain to the collection.

Telling the group to "come and get it" would also open the door to any myriad of other orginazations who claim to have the "transfered real ownership" of any piece of equipment in the museum, or for any other museum for that matter, to threaten expensive, long civil litigation unless "their" equipment is "rightfully" returned to the "real owners."

The more that I look over this utter foolishness, the more I get convinced that either the STB-filing fanatic bozo of Timonium/Cockeysville, Md. and/or his co-conspirators must be somehow involved. <:-p

On the other hand:



Though in theory this is a serious issue worthy of weighty consideration in almost every instance, aside from the DL&W 952 issue how often do we ever encounter a case where this would legitimately become an issue? It's not like, just to make up some wild example, some group would demand the "rightful" return of CB&Q 4960 from the Grand Canyon RR to the Midwest...........

There is one serious example I know of currently a "hot potato" with one museum where (okay, I have to disguise this a bit because I understand the actual issue is almost explosive at the moment) years ago a collection of foreign locomotive builders' photos was accepted as a donation by the curator of a well-known rail museum (which should never have accepted them in the first place, as it in no way whatsoever fits any mission statement of the museum), and forty years later, the value of said collection--estimated to be worth perhaps six figures in American dollars--has skyrocketed, and the heirs of the original donors are making noises about possibly returning said photos so they can liquidate them for the substantial worth and thus donate more stuff to the museum....... but since the protocol doesn't seem to allow for deaccession, well........... everyone is pretty much screwed at the moment............

[quote="wilkinsd"] Then again, this takes away time and resources the County Counselor's office could spend on other cases, matters.

So why is this not a strategy cue for whoever is behind the "Lackawanna Chapter," assuming it is successful in the current proceeding and has resources with which to continue? It might then seek to flush out the true costs incurred to date by the County, by way of Freedom of Information requests, being sure to direct such requests to some hapless accounting bureaucrat unable to easily produce the true costs but unable to easily explain why, and beat him up a little bit to create an impression that something is being covered up. This kind of stuff is cheap; you don't even need to be a lawyer. Then get the "coverup" into the newspapers, along with cost comparisions of however many teachers of the handicapped or heating oil subsidies or whatever could be paid for by the County instead of wasting it defending some silly old train. Wait for the museum officials to dig their own graves in the press, because any argument about esoteric museum accession issues or the importance of an all-encompassing "collection by wheel arrangement" policy can be easily spun into so much nonsence coming from the choo-choo crowd (insert description of folks wearing patch vests, listening to scanners, etc). Keep the pressure up in the press, hopefully finding a reporter seeking to rise and an editor on a mission, and the museum may eventually have to confront the fact that, unlike at the Guggenheim or whatever, "museum principles" come with a price that is easily quantifiable by the County officials that ultimately control the purse strings. Then roll in a couple of flatbed trailors, next stop the hard coal country.

GJC

I have once again unlocked this thread. It will stay unlocked as long as the discourse remains civil.

OK, I will try again in more general terms. The officers and directors of the Lackawanna Chapter of the R&LHS are more of less the same people running the Friends of the NJ Transportation Museum, the lead group in the various efforts to build a railroad museum in NJ, most recently by have preserved farmland in Warren County, NJ taken out of preservation and given to them. There is also overlap (but less so) with the United Railroad Historical Society of NJ, which owns most of the rail equipment (the majority of which was transferred to them by NJTransit) that is supposed to go into this museum, if it ever is built. The usable piece of the collection are mostly leased out, the remaining pieces are stored at 4 or so locations around the state, mostly in very poor condition.

Here are some facts about both groups that I think everyone can agree with:

1. URHS has been critizied (here and elsewhere) for painting its equipment for favorite railroads/schemes of the directors rather than for the actual railroads this equipment ran for.

1A. The most famous project of URHS has been the Hickory Creek. I think they say that $800,000 has been spent on its restoration. But the car never ran in the state of New Jersey and is billed as the centerpiece of a NJ museum.

2. The Friends/Lackawanna Chapter became involved in the situation at Jim Thorpe, PA by taking over the lease of track there and threatening to remove the track unless money and/or terms were met.

3. The Lackawanna Chapter attempting to reclaim DL&W 952 by the courts. We can argue over the reasons and validity of their claim, but no one can argue that this isn't costing real money.

So, without getting this thread locked again, what are these group of people trying to do? Is there a reason, a plan, a serious preservation goal here? Is there a positive about all of this that they just haven't been able to express to the public?

The Preservation situation in New Jersey is riddled with controversy. I think the best way to approach this situation is to do further digging to present the facts – and to let the facts speak for themselves. This is especially useful for discussing this topic on the interchange – as it harder to argue over the validity of facts and easy to argue over personal editorializing.

What would be helpful in evaluating these facts would be to accurately document common/overlapping leadership among the different preservation groups involved in this region – both currently and in the past. This is already public information, and if someone would compile it – it would help us all better understand the situation.

Tom Cornillie

Tom,

After a quick review of available websites and IRS Form 990's, here is what we have.

Between all three groups, one name is in common as an officer/director. However, the Lackawanna Chapter does not file a Form 990 (curious since they have received money well over $25,000 for work on the Delaware Water Gap station in pervious years - we'll assume legal fees will trigger a filing for 2006) we only have their part of the R&LHS website, which lists only two officers, one being tied to all three groups.

Between URHS and the Friends, in addition to the one person listed above, six directors/officers overlap. One of the six appears to be the wife of the one in common to all three.

At this point, I don't see a point in specifically listing the names here. As you point out, anyone can poke around the internet and find these names in five minutes. I would like to verify the remaining officers/directors of the Lackawanna Chapter as I believe there are two more overlapping players.