Former Greenbrier president sues CSX over departure

LEWISBURG, W.Va.  — The former president of The Greenbrier, who resigned after less than a year at the famed resort, has filed a $50 million lawsuit against Florida-based railroad giant CSX Corp., claiming he was forced out of his job for trying to end “fringe benefits” enjoyed by CSX executives.

Paul Ratchford filed the suit Friday against CSX, The Greenbrier’s parent company, claiming that CSX President Michael Ward fired Ratchford after he tried to stop company executives from enjoying free rooms and meals, discounted merchandise and even free medical exams at the resort.

Neither Ratchford nor his lawyer, Barry Bruce of Lewisburg, could be immediately reached for comment Saturday.

CSX dismissed the lawsuit’s allegations as having no merit, spokesman Gary Sease told the Beckley Register-Herald, and plans to defend itself vigorously in court.

Ratchford’s lawsuit claims that CSX executives were benefiting from the lavish comforts available at the four-star resort while, Ratchford claims, The Greenbrier was losing roughly $15 million a year.

The suit alleges that all the supposed freebies enjoyed by CSX executives were also improperly shielded from possible taxation.

“None of such benefits were being attributed as income to said executives, in contravention of West Virginia tax law,” the lawsuit states. “Executives ... were receiving an enormous amount of free benefits for themselves, their families and their friends, all at great expense to The Greenbrier.”

Ratchford had been The Greenbrier’s president for less than a year when the company announced his departure in September 2007, saying he was leaving to “pursue other interests.”

Ratchford quit California’s Ritz-Carlton at Half Moon Bay to oversee The Greenbrier’s revamping, part of a bid to attract a younger generation of luxury travelers and recapture some of the resort’s faded grandeur.

In January 2000, the editors of Mobil Travel Guide stripped away The Greenbrier’s coveted five-star rating, proclaiming the historic hotel no longer stood among the few dozen considered the world’s finest.

Work to regain the fifth star began immediately, surging into overdrive in 2006 with a $50 million renovation effort.