Federal trucking regulations don’t stand in the way of a legal dispute over truck driver business
expense reimbursement, a federal judge ruled.
The decision means CSX Intermodal Terminals Inc. has to face a lawsuit filed by 53 truck drivers
who want to be reimbursed for expenses. They say a California law that requires companies to
reimburse workers for business expenses overrides terms in their contracts that require them to
bear such costs.
“Typically on these trucking cases, people’s operating expenses run in the $25,000 to $50,000 a
year range,” Aaron Kaufmann, a lawyer for the drivers, told Bloomberg Law. He estimated his
clients are owed at least $5 million in unreimbursed expenses and associated penalties allowed
under the California law. Kaufmann, with Leonard Carder LLP in Oakland, Calif., is an editor-inchief
of a Bloomberg Law treatise on federal wage-and-hour law.
CSX declined to comment.
CSX hires drivers through contracts called leases. The federal truth-in-leasing regulations require
carriers and drivers to address certain topics in their lease agreements so operators can make
informed decisions, Judge Edward Chen of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of
California said. When Congress authorized the regulations, it didn’t intend to block state worker
protection laws, he said.
California’s business expense law, like its law mandating rest and meal breaks after working a
certain number of hours, is unusual among state worker protection laws. The U.S. Department of
Transportation determined that federal hazardous material transportation law pre-empts the state’s
rest and meal break rules because they create an “unnecessary delay” in transporting explosives.
The case is Goyal v. CSX Intermodal Terminals, Inc., 2018 BL 348141, N.D. Cal., No. 17-cv-
06081, judgment on the pleadings denied 9/25/18.
Reproduced with permission. Published 9/26/18. Copyright 2020 by The Bureau of National Affairs, Inc. (800-372-1033) <http://www.bloombergindustry.com>