JACKSONVILLE -- Executives for Jacksonville-based railroad CSX Transportation should pay for medical testing for workers who could have suffered brain damage while using chemicals on the job, lawyers said in a class-action lawsuit filed on May 18, the Florida Times-Union reports.

The suit, filed in Marshall County, W.Va., seeks money for current rank-and file rail employees in Jacksonville, Waycross and several other areas who think they've been exposed to specific solvents to get medical testing or treatment.

CSXT spokesman Gary Sease said since no executives at the railroad had seen the lawsuit there would be no official comment. CSXT officials have previously denied a connection between the solvent and brain damage.

Conditions from the common degreasing solvents, used to clean locomotives, include short-term memory loss and depression, said Mark Coulter, a Pittsburgh lawyer representing the yet-unnamed CSXT workers in the case.

"CSX never told the workers these [chemicals] could be hazardous," Coulter said. "They didn't take any steps to protect the workers."

CSXT said it stopped using the solvent in the mid 1980s because its disposal was too expensive.

This latest lawsuit is among at least 10 similar solvent-related cases that have been filed against CSXT or settled in recent years.

In a recent published report, Edward Stopher, a lawyer representing CSX, said the railroad doesn't "believe that the science and the medicine supports this casual connection" between brain damage and the solvents. He made his comments to a Louisville, Ky., newspaper that investigated possible brain damage incidents in railroad workers across the nation.

In the class-action suit filed yesterday, Coulter says CSXT and other predecessor railroads have exposed employees to the dangerous organic solvents since the 1960s. Besides brain damage, the chemicals can cause liver damage, blood disorders, cancer and death, Coulter said in a statement.

"The workers also assert that the railroad should have monitored the levels of these chemicals in the air, provided respiratory protection, and improved the safety of work practices in the areas where they worked," the suit contends.

Coulter said this lawsuit is for the people who don't know they are sick yet, not for people who have already filed claims. It covers both current and former rail workers.

The lawyer said his firm was alerted to the problems by phone calls from CSXT workers who said they had medical problems, including memory loss.

No court date has been set yet for the case.

The lawsuit is the latest in what has been a tumultuous few weeks for the nation's third-largest railroad. The company, which employs more than 4,000 in Jacksonville, received better news earlier in May when the Federal Railroad Administration reported that CSXT had a big decrease in derailments and accidents for the January-February period compared with a year ago.

Then earlier this week, the railroad received national attention when a runaway train barrelled through northeastern Ohio for two hours before a CSXT employee jumped on board and stopped it. No injuries were reported.

Meanwhile, the railroad has been waging another fight in court, one which could determine who pays for medical damages -- the railroad or the insurers -- for some of the potential victims in other cases.

That case, filed before yesterday's class-action suit, has been argued before a jury in front of Jacksonville Circuit Judge Henry Davis. However, the two sides interpreted the results of the case differently.

Robert Guenther, a spokesman for lawyers representing the insurance companies, said the jury ruled in their favor earlier this month, meaning the insurance companies are off the hook. The next step would be for the railroad to appeal, if it wants to.

"The verdict has been rendered," Guenther said in an interview yesterday. "The insurance companies have won."

But Sease, the CSX spokesman, disagreed. He said the jury verdict was only an "advisory opinion" and Judge Davis would get to make the final call. Railroad lawyers also said the jury's opinion was in their favor, not the insurance companies'.