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that the SP billing office in Los Angeles would require that a weight be shown on the shipper’s bill of lading. He stated that he attempted to contact Lake Minerals Corporation to inquire about the weights of the cars but was unable to obtain the company’s telephone number. Based on his experience working for the railroad, he then estimated the weight of the product to be 60 tons per car and wrote the figure of 120,000 pounds per car on the bill of lading (appendix C). He testified, "…I figured these cars were lighter than cement cars and I knew cement cars were 75 tons, so my estimated weight was 60 tons and I entered it." The shipping clerk did not indicate on the bill of lading that the weight listed was an estimated weight. After the writing the figure of 120,000 pounds per car on the bill of lading, he sent the document, via a facsimile (fax) machine, to the Los Angeles office. The shipping clerk testified that he had never before received a bill of lading that did not have the weights provided. There was no documentation available to the shipping clerk that indicated the actual weight of trona (or any other commodity) or outlined the procedures to follow when the shipper did not provide weights on the bill of lading. The superintendent of Lake Minerals testified that he believed the weight of 200,000 pounds per car had been written on the bill of lading for the first shipment of trona.
Upon receipt of the document in the Los Angeles office, a billing clerk entered the bill of lading information into SP’s computer system; information that would later be used to prepare the train (tonnage) profile.[1] According to SP’s director of system clerical operations, there are two methods available to the billing clerk to enter bill of lading information into the computer when a unit train[2] is involved. He testified, "One is where the only thing that you show is the total shipment weight, the cumulative weight of all cars and not the individual weights of each car. The second method of entry is where you make the individual weights for the individual cars." Further testimony indicated that if the first method is used, weight information will be entered into the waybill file but that any weight previously entered into the car file will not be upgraded. If the second method is used, the weights estimated and previously entered into the car file of the computer system by the yard clerks would be overridden by the weights entered by the billing clerk. The billing clerk in Los Angeles on May 6, 1989, used the first method for entering the bill of lading information. There was no indication on the document received by the billing clerk in Los Angeles that the figure of 120,000 pounds per car was an estimated weight.
