Railtrack - Railtrack Compensation/Railtrack Litigation - D

Railtrack - D

Railtrack Compensation

Railtrack Litigation

In late 2001, Railtrack shareholders formed two groups to press for increased compensation. A lawyer speaking for one of those groups remarked on GMTV that his strategy was to sue the government for incorrect and misleading information given at the time Railtrack was created, when John Major was Conservative Prime Minister. An increased offer of up to 262p per share was enough to convince the larger shareholder group, the Railtrack Action Group, to abandon legal action. The Chairman, Usman Mahmud, believed that legal action would not be successful without the support of management and major shareholders.

The legality of the decision to put Railtrack into railway administration was challenged by the smaller Railtrack Private Shareholders Action Group. Their action against the government alleged that the Secretary of State for Transport at the time - Stephen Byers MP - had, by deciding to cut off funding for Railtrack and asking the High Court to put the company into railway administration, committed the common law tort of misfeasance in public office.

It is believed that there was £532 million available to Railtrack comprising £370 million in the bank, along with £162 million of an existing Department of Transport loan facility still available to be drawn down, but Stephen Byers MP cancelled this facility, causing shareholders to believe that he had broken the loan agreement.

This was the largest class action ever conducted in the English courts - there were 49,500 claimants, all small shareholders in Railtrack. Keith Rowley, QC, the barrister for the shareholders, alleged Byers had "devised a scheme by which he intended to injure the shareholders of Railtrack Group by impairing the value of their interests in that company without paying compensation and without the approval of Parliament".

The case was heard in the High Court in London in July 2005, some embarrassment was caused to Byers when he admitted that an answer he had given to a House of Commons Select Committee was inaccurate, but on 14 October 2005 the judge found that there was no evidence that Byers had committed the tort of misfeasance in public office. The private shareholders decided not to appeal against the judgment because there were no legal grounds for doing so. For many of them - who had contributed around £50 each, on average, to the fighting fund to bring the action - the case had served its purpose.

The circumstances in which Railtrack had been put into administration were highly controversial, with allegations in Parliament on 24 October 2005 that the company had not been insolvent at the time (7 October 2001) and therefore that the administration order had been wrongly obtained. This was because of the jurisdiction of the independent rail regulator - at the time Tom Winsor - to provide additional money to maintain the company's financial position. Sir Alan Duncan MP, then the shadow transport secretary, said in Parliament that this aspect of the affair - which was not dealt with in the shareholders' case in the High Court - was "perhaps the most shameful scar on the Government's honesty" and "an absolute scandal".

Byers apologised in the House of Commons on 17 October 2005 for having given a "factually inaccurate" reply to the Select Committee but said that he had not intended to mislead them. This personal statement to Parliament was not accepted by the MP who had asked the original question, and the matter was remitted to the House of Commons Standards and Privileges Committee for investigation. As a result of that committee's report, Mr Byers made another statement of apology to Parliament.

Railtrack Overview

Railtrack Type: Public

Railtrack Industry: Rail transport

Railtrack Predecessor: British Rail

Railtrack Founded: 1 April 1994

Railtrack Defunct: 18 October 2002

Railtrack Fate: Renationalised

Railtrack Successor: Network Rail

Railtrack Headquarters: London, England

Railtrack Key People: John Robinson (Chairman)

Gerald Corbett (CEO)

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