The trial over the right of independent truckers to continue servicing the Port of Los Angeles drew to a close last week in Los Angeles federal court with no settlement appearing likely.

Lawyers for the trucking industry and the Port of Los Angeles wrapped up their cases before U.S. District Court Judge Christina A. Snyder, who is hearing the case without a jury.

Snyder toured the port Thursday to get a first-hand understanding of the operation, and gave attorneys two weeks to submit written closing arguments before issuing a verdict.

“I’m very hopeful that we will prevail,” said Robert Digges, an attorney for the American Trucking Associations, an Arlington, Va.-based organization representing the truckers.

Attorneys for the city-operated port declined comment.

The trial stems from the $1.6 billion Clean Trucks Program launched by the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 2008. It requires all big rigs doing business in the ports to meet 2007 federal emissions standards by 2012. Already thousands of old rigs have been replaced with cleaner burning models.

The ATA went along with some of the program but challenged several aspects, especially its requirement that freight-hauling companies and doing business with the port of Los Angeles switch from independent owner-operators to employee drivers. The lawsuit also challenged the port’s plan to set off-street parking limits and require demonstrations of financial responsibility by trucking companies with which it does business.

The ATA has argued that the ban has been driven by the desire of Teamsters to unionize truckers. But the trial focused on whether the port violated the Federal Aviation Act and the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the federal government sole authority to regulate interstate commerce.

In April 2009, Snyder issued a preliminary injunction temporarily blocking the L.A. port from enforcing the controversial rules. The port won a partial vindication in February when the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals tentatively ruled that most provisions of its proposed concession agreements are legal, setting the stage for the trial on the independent owner-operator ban and a handful of other issues.

(The Port of Long Beach, which has similar emission-reduction goals, does not ban independent owner-operators, and eventually reached a separate agreement with the ATA.)

Trial testimony

During several days of testimony, the port attempted to establish that its rule banning owner operators was driven by legitimate concerns to safely regulate the port.

David Freeman, former president of the Los Angeles Board of Harbor Commissioners, which oversees the port, testified that independent owner operators were not as trustworthy to service the port as employee drivers.

“There is a fundamental difference between what an employer knows about his or her employees and the information available about independent owner-operators,” Freeman said. “The word ‘independent’ speaks for itself. The information an employer gets before he hires a driver is, in itself, a form of security.”

Independent owner-operators, Freeman said, are “an unreliable work force, incapable of financing, maintaining and owning the new trucks we need. The port has enough to do without getting into the business of enforcement.”

Jim Hall, former chairman of the National Transportation Safety Board, attested to what he described as the “safety, security and maintenance benefits” of the concession plan.

“There are obvious consequences if you don’t have enforcement,” he said, in reference to potential lax enforcement with owner operators.

Port Director Geraldine Knatz was the final witness for the port and spent much of her time on the stand outlining the Clean Trucks Program and its financial costs.

In an interview after her testimony, she maintained there are practical problems in regulating independent truckers listed on a truck registry versus employees who work for a company.

“There’s someone else to police them; all we have to do is call. If there’s just a truck registry you’ve got to chase them down yourself, and often that’s hard to do,” she said.

The port’s case followed several days of testimony by witnesses for the trucker organization including Annette Sandberg, administrator of the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration and former chief of the Washington State Patrol, similar to the California Highway Patrol.

She testified about existing trucking regulations, contending that independent owner-operators tend to follow them. Other witnesses included an expert in port security and representatives of four trucking companies who said that having to hire drivers would force them to raise their cargo rates or go broke.

“We don’t deny that there’s an environmental problem, but there are already federal and state regulations addressing that,” said Digges of the ATA during a break in the hearing. “Rather than doing its job of enforcing the law, the port wants to disrupt the entire independent trucking industry. There is nothing saying that truckers will miraculously obey all the rules if they work for a company.”