A Bridgeport-area radiologist who was missing for months has reappeared and is asking a federal judge to dismiss a lawsuit against him that alleges RICO and civil conspiracy, racketeering and fraud.

Dr. Ray Harron, who made a name for himself as an expert lung X-ray reader in asbestos and silicosis lawsuits, said CSX Transportation failed in legal documents to demonstrate that he acted with criminal intent when he diagnosed railroad workers with the incurable lung ailments.

His lawyers asked that all complaints against the doctor be dropped.

“The facts alleged in the (complaint) specifically regarding Dr. Harron neither support the claim that he had fraudulent intent nor a claim that he knowingly joined any RICO conspiracy,” his attorneys Jerald Jones of Clarksburg, Lawrence Goldman of New York City and Ron Barroso of Corpus Christi, Texas, wrote in court filings.

The response from Harron and his attorneys was a long time coming. In October, CSX’s law firm, Huntington-based Huddleston Bolen LLP, filed court documents stating they had spent months searching for Harron to serve him with papers in relation to the ongoing lawsuit. Firm employees couldn’t locate him. Neither could deputies with the Harrison County Sheriff’s Department. Private investigators also could not find the doctor even after searching his homes in North Carolina, Texas and Florida, according to court records.

In fact, lawyers with Huddleston were so worried about Harron’s whereabouts that they filed documents with the federal court in Wheeling, warning that the doctor — who has duel citizenship in Ireland, Jamaica and other Caribbean countries –might have fled overseas.

But earlier this year, Harron reappeared. He filed a response in U.S District Court Judge Frederick P. Stamp Jr.’s court challenging CSX’s claims against the doctor and demanding that the complaint be dropped. They also asked that the doctor be removed as a defendant from a lawsuit between CSX and a major Pittsburgh-area asbestos litigation firm, Peirce, Raimond & Coulter, also known as Robert Peirce & Associates.

The lawsuit, which was filed in 2005, alleges the Peirce firm filed numerous asbestosis claims against the railroad company on behalf of CSX employees, including several that the firm knew were improper.

The railroad company’s lawyers expanded the lawsuit in July 2005 to include Herron, who they said conducted bogus readings of thousands of employees’ chest X-rays and diagnosed lung diseases asbestosis and silicosis in some workers in exchange for getting paid a flat rate per X-ray.

In their court filings, Harron’s lawyers said CSX failed to prove those claims, saying there was no evidence Harron worked with anyone else or plotted to defraud the company or engage in any pattern of racketeering activity, nor did he have the “requisite state of mind” required for a RICO case.

“In order to commit a RICO conspiracy an individual ‘must adopt the goal of furthering or facilitating the criminal endeavor,’” the document stated, adding, “The amended complaint is devoid of specific factual allegations that show that Dr. Herron adopted or even was aware of any such ‘criminal endeavor’ by the lawyer-defendants.”

CSX directly rebuffed that statement in a response the company’s lawyers filed in federal court. The railroad’s response agreed that laws relating to RICO conspiracies require that defendants have a goal of furthering a criminal endeavor but pointed out there were many ways to do that, including by “agreeing to facilitate only some of the acts leading to the substantive offense.”

“It is not necessary for the defendant to know all of the details or the full extent of the conspiracy,” CSX’s lawyers wrote, later explaining that at a minimum their complaint presents enough facts that would allow a person to reasonably infer that Harron knew of the Peirce firm’s alleged scheme to pursue false personal injury claims against the railroad company.

“Harron worked with (the Peirce firm) for at least four years and was hired ‘because of his willingness to read unusually large numbers of X-rays at one time,’” CSX’s lawyers stated. “He was also compensated on a per X-ray, as opposed to hourly, basis, thereby enhancing his financial incentive to read as many X-rays as possible without regard to established medical protocols.”

Harron’s lawyers said CSX’s allegations of wire and mail fraud could not be substantiated because the railroad company had no way to prove the X-rays or the results mailed through U.S. Postal Service were false.

“The alleged misrepresentations, that the claimants had asbestosis and/or that their X-rays were consistent with asbestosis, were not ones plaintiff CSX could justifiably or reasonably rely upon in light of its access to information that would reveal these statements were false, if they were false,” Harron’s response stated.

Harron’s lawyers said CSX could have requested copies of the chest X-rays in question and have their own radiologist read them. But the company did not. As a result, Harron’s lawyers said, the railroad company cannot assert that that mail fraud or wire fraud took place.

Harron’s lawyers pointed out that CSX is challenging only 18 X-ray readings from nine people taken between 1999 and 2003.

“These claims are based on allegations that Dr. Harron ‘reversed’ his conclusions for nine individual claimants — initially reading their X-rays to show no asbestosis and then, sometime later, reading different X-rays to show asbestosis (albeit at the lowest level perceptible in a chest X-ray.)”

They said asbestosis is a progressive disease that gets worse over time. So, they said, it doesn’t prove anything if Harron read an X-ray once as testing negative for the disease and later read it as having positive signs of the ailment.

“It is entirely possible that Harron read both X-rays accurately and the individual’s disease had progressed in the intervening period,” his lawyers wrote. “This is especially likely since the second B-reads by Dr. Harron always showed the lowest possible level of lung damage to support a finding consistent with asbestosis, not a level consistent with significant or advanced disease.”

CSX’s lawyers beseeched Stamp to not grant Harron’s requests. The company’s lawyers said requests for dismissal are “not warranted unless it appears to a certainty that the plaintiff would be entitled to no relief under any state of facts which could be proven in support of a claim.”

CSX’s lawyers said Harron’s lawyers mischaracterize the nature of the RICO and fraud allegations and “impermissibly relies on facts beyond the scope of the amended complaint.”

“Specifically Harron’s motion assumes that (the Peirce firm) complied with the mediation order and provides CSXT with the X-rays on which the fraudulent claims were based during the course of the underlying litigation even though the amended complaint contains no such allegations,” CSX’s response to Harron reads, adding, “More importantly, even assuming that (the Peirce firm) produced a single X-ray on which each fraudulent claim was based and that this fact is properly before the Court, which it clearly is not, Harron’s assertion that ‘CSX could easily have’ discovered the existence of fraud ‘by having a different radiologist read’ the X-rays is simply incorrect.

“At most, an independent review of the X-rays would have revealed that Harron’s diagnoses were questionable. It would not, however, have revealed that Harron had reversed his own prior diagnoses despite the objectively unchanged condition of the claimants’ lungs, nor would it have revealed the egregiously high rate at which Harron identified asbestosis in the X-rays he read for (the Peirce firm.)”