Top ATA Attorney Digges Will Retire After 28 Years in Defense of Trucking
This story appears in the Jan. 23 print edition of Transport Topics.
Robert Digges Jr., vice president and chief counsel for American Trucking Associations and a top attorney for ATA’s Litigation Center, is retiring from his post effective Jan. 27, ATA announced last week.
Digges has been in top positions as an attorney and litigator for ATA since 1984, when he joined the federation as assistant director of the state laws department.
Before that, Digges was an assistant attorney general with the state of West Virginia, where he prosecuted state tax cases.
Digges has been a rarity among trade association in-house attorneys — he’s also been a litigator, people familiar with his work said. Digges has argued cases in state, federal district and appeals courts and the U.S. Supreme Court.
“ATA has been tremendously fortunate to have Bob’s services for nearly 30 years,” said Bill Graves, president of ATA. “His legal acumen and understanding of our industry have allowed ATA to prevail on dozens of issues of great importance to our members, issues that run the gamut from taxation to independent contractor status. His experience and his intellect will be sorely missed as he moves on to a well-earned retirement.”
Mark Goodwin, a Richmond, Va., attorney who has worked closely with Digges for 20 years, called Digges “a very dependable lawyer.”
“He’s laser-focused on doing the right thing legally for ATA,” said Goodwin, a former attorney for Overnite Transportation Co. and UPS Freight and a past board member of ATA’s Litigation Center. “He’s extremely capable in identifying and handling the kinds of key issues that are important to ATA legally.”
“You very seldom anymore see in-house lawyers who are capable of handling litigation by themselves, and thus saving the industry on outside lawyers,” Goodwin added. “In that sense, he’s going to be hard to replace.”
ATA Chairman Dan England called Digges an “understated, unassuming guy who gets the job done and is not looking for a lot of accolades in the process.”
“I’m an attorney and, based on my experience, I can appreciate the fact that having those dual roles in one person is an extreme rarity,” said England, who is also chairman of C.R. England Trucking Co.
Digges recently argued ATA’s lawsuit against the Port of Los Angeles’ clean trucks plan, which included an employee-only concession agreement. ATA’s lawsuit resulted in that provision being struck down by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
Digges, 61, received a bachelor’s degree in accounting from West Virginia University in 1972 and a law degree from the West Virginia University School of Law in 1975.
Using his state tax background on behalf of the trucking industry, Digges participated in the 1987 landmark Scheiner case victory in the U.S. Supreme Court, which established that states’ flat per-truck annual fees violated the Commerce Clause of the U.S. Constitution.
The victory in that case led to the elimination of nearly two dozen state flat truck fees and nearly $250 million in refunds to the trucking industry.
Digges also led challenges to weight-distance schemes in Arkansas and Idaho that resulted in approximately $50 million in tax refunds to the industry and the implementation of preferable highway tax systems that collect millions less annually from the industry.
He also has overseen the ATA Litigation Center’s active litigation docket, which recently has included litigation related not only to the ports lawsuit, but also to FMCSA’s hours-of-service rules and its supporting documents regulation, and numerous briefs in support of upholding owner-operator status.
Co-workers say Digges is unpretentious and is an effective case manager and litigator who watches ATA’s legal costs very closely.
“He has been a tenacious advocate for the trucking industry whose judgment and knowledge will be missed,” said Prasad Sharma, ATA vice president and general counsel. “I think a great testament to Bob’s work is that his litigation victories — particularly in the area of state tax schemes that violated the Commerce Clause — has had and will continue to have a lasting impact.”
Curtis Whalen, executive director of ATA’s Intermodal Motor Carriers Conference, said Digges “never gets caught unprepared” in a court setting.
“There are lawyers that just do court work, and there are lawyers that just do background work,” said Whalen, who worked with Digges closely on the Port of Los Angeles case. “He basically does both but also manages the cases. He’s very much in control of the entire litigation package.”
In a related announcement, ATA said that Rich Moskowitz, vice president and regulatory affairs counsel, left ATA last month to become general counsel for the National Petrochemicals & Refiners Association.
