Opinion ID: 1354606
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: the essence of this controversy presents an agency issue

Text: Whenever the parties' conduct is to be assayed in terms of compliance with, or conformity to, the Commission-fashioned provisions of an outstanding regulatory order, the interests tendered for adversarial testing are those whose origin lie in the state's exercise of its police power exerting itself through the medium of a pooling order. [1] This inquiry calls for a declaration of rights created by the regulatory order rather than of interests derived from some private-law source. Because the district court is powerless either to construe or to review [2] these decisions of the Commission, the Commission itself affords the only available tribunal for resolution of all those disputed claims in which the extent or viability of rights derived from the provisions of a pooling order must be measured by the yardstick of conformity to the Commission-prescribed terms. [3]