SURFACE TRANSPORTATION BOARD

Office of Chief Counsel

The Surface Transportation Board’s Office of Chief Counsel (OCC) is responsible for most of the legal work conducted by the agency, including agency law, litigation, case administration, general law, and passenger rail and investigations.  OCC is headed by the Chief Counsel, who also serves as the agency’s General Counsel.

The Office’s Agency Law attorneys support the resolution of proceedings before the agency, including adjudications, licensing, declaratory orders, rulemaking, and any other proceedings brought before or initiated by the Board.  Agency Law attorneys review all submissions to the Board in those proceedings, analyze the legal issues presented, and lead staff teams to develop and brief Board members on recommendations to resolve the issues presented.  These attorneys also prepare drafts of nearly every decision to be issued by the Board and coordinate the review of draft decisions among relevant Board offices.

The Office’s Litigation attorneys provide defensibility advice to the agency and defend in court the STB’s decisions that are challenged.  When STB decisions are challenged—typically in a United States court of appeals—the agency has independent litigating authority, which means that both the STB, represented by the agency’s own attorneys, and the United States, represented by U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) attorneys, must be named as respondents, and both have statutory authority to appear in court in such cases.

The Office’s Section of Case Administration staff, which includes attorney and paralegal specialists and administrative support staff, are responsible for processing incoming filings, reviewing filings for compliance with the Board’s regulations, updating case dockets, and posting public filings on the Board’s website.  These staff members are also responsible for recording the Board Members’ votes and officially serving the agency’s final decisions, including posting the decisions on the Board’s website and transmitting them to the Federal Register for publication, if needed.  Case Administration staff also administer the STB recordations database on the Board’s public website, which is an official repository for recordations of legal documents (such as mortgages, leases, equipment trust agreements, or conditional sales agreements) evidencing a security interest in railroad cars, locomotives, other rolling stock, or water carrier vessels.

The Office’s General Law attorneys provide advice and support for Freedom of Information Act, ethics, personnel, procurement, and other areas of law related to the administration of the agency.

The Office also houses the Board’s Chief of Passenger Rail and Investigations, who leads the Board’s cross-disciplinary passenger rail flex team in support of the agency’s statutory responsibilities under the Passenger Rail Investment and Improvement Act of 2008.  Because the needs of the Board’s passenger rail program fluctuate, the program reflects a flexible, team-based structure that allows it to leverage expertise from across the agency and nimbly respond to the needs of an investigation or other case, as the Board does with other matters.  The team provides the Board with expertise related to passenger rail that includes legal and policy guidance, engineering, data analysis, and rail operations.