Railway Age has learned that Fritz Reiner Kahn, a former general counsel to Surface Transportation Board (STB) predecessor Interstate Commerce Commission (ICC), died in October at age 98. He established a substantial professional footprint and legacy in the transportation legal and regulatory community during more than half a century as a transportation attorney.
Kahn authored scores of scholarly articles on motor carrier and railroad regulation, and while in private practice represented shippers, motor carriers and short line railroads before the ICC, STB and federal courts. His “Principles of Motor Carrier Regulation” text book, published in 1958, guided many traffic managers, young transportation attorneys and university students in their careers until trucking economic regulation was ended by Congress in 1980. His articles on railroad economic and legal issues were primers for many in the rail industry.
Following graduation from George Washington University Law School in 1950, Kahn was employed by the ICC as a staff attorney at a time the agency employed more than 2,000 and regulated rates and services of domestic inland waterways operators, bus and motor truck operators, freight forwarders and railroads. He progressed to ICC deputy general counsel and then general counsel in January 1971 and departed in June 1976 to enter private practice. Among those Kahn mentored in the ICC general counsel’s office was attorney Betty Jo Christian, who became a Senate-confirmed ICC member (1976-1979).
Kahn was a commander in the U.S. Naval Reserve, president of the ICC Bar Association (1988-1989), editor of its law journal, now the Journal of Transportation Law, Logistics & Policy (1958-1959), and while in private practice was general counsel to the Transportation Research Forum (1979-1987) and the National Business Traffic Association (1985-1992).
Born in Ludwigshafen, Germany, Nov. 12, 1926, Fritz and his two older brothers escaped the Holocaust with their attorney father Richard and mother Alice, and were welcomed in the United States in 1935.
Kahn’s first marriage to Ann Pasternack, who died at age 94 in 2020, ended in divorce. She was long employed by the League of Women Voters, was a three-term chairperson of the Fairfax County, Va., School Board, and National President of the 5.6-million-member PTA. Surviving that marriage are daughter Nancy Kahn Bolash of Williamsburg, Va., a retired attorney and local prosecutor; and son David W. Kahn, a retired biochemist in Maryland.
Fritz Kahn’s second wife, Ellen Efros, who died in 2022, was an assistant deputy attorney general for the District of Columbia.
In retirement, Fritz and Ellen resided at an assisted living center (Oak Hammock) on the campus of the University of Florida in Gainesville, where residents may sit in on class lectures.
