Opinion ID: 240284
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Suspension Cases

Text: 63 In each of the Suspension Cases, the producer sought to collect the increased rate resulting from automatic contract escalation provisions. These rate increases were treated as new filings under Section 4 and were suspended for various periods of time. As thus presented each involves the question discussed at length concerning the nature of escalation increases and the Commission's power to forbid them. That is a serious question of law with substantial arguments on both sides. If what I have said is correct, then these petitioners in the Suspension Cases are certainly aggrieved and, as to them, the question is ripe for judicial review. 64 But the majority never gets to this point for the holding is simply that a suspension order, even though invalid, is not a Section 19(b) Order. In my judgment, this ignores the significant absence of any modifying term such as final in Section 19(b) and is, again, a situation in which the Court has closed its eyes to reality. A suspension order is final in fact. As these verified petitions reflect, for the period of suspension the seller has been unable to collect what he claims is the rightful increase in rate. This amounts in dollars to huge sums of money individually and collectively. There is no relief because the Commission has no power to award reparations or to impose out of current rates an amount needed to make up for a past deficiency due to an improvident suspension. 28 65 Testing reviewability the hypothesis must be that the Order is invalid. On that assumption what more is needed, either to impose real, pressing, irreparable injury, or to present for review the serious question of law? Each of these Suspension Cases presents the common question: Is an escalation increase subject to suspension? If it is, then the matter must grind through the administrative process. If it is not, then no facts, no evidence, no peculiar circumstances can make it such. And the Commission's suspension order, in such an eventuality, ought to be set aside to restore the parties to their prior condition so near as the law may do it. Of course, the Commission cannot, to defeat reviewability, assert that facts are needed to prove that petitioners are subject to the Act, for the very act of issuance of the suspension order is a finding of coverage. Petitioners may question it on the review when granted, but the Administrator can not claim he lacked power to do what was done. 66 Moreover, it should be remembered that a suspension is a unique procedure from the standpoint of both the gas company and the Commission. The Commission's power is extremely limited. It may invoke it only within the 30-day notice time and it may not extend it beyond five months. Once the rate becomes effective, it is assumed that no power to suspend can be revived. Once the five months has expired, the power is gone except insofar as the surety bond may continue it conditionally in effect. It is entirely separate from the hearings which must be held, United Gas Pipe Line Co. v. Mobile Gas Service Corporation, supra, and whatever is done within the five months is forever and irretrievably final. When one seeks a judicial review of an order assumed to be invalid because it forever deprives a person of his right to recover substantial sums of money presumably due under a contract, and the question of its validity will have no bearing whatsoever on the ultimate approval of the rates involved, the appeal is not an effort, as characterized by my Brothers, to disturb the orderly administrative processes. 67 Precisely this problem — an illegal suspension order — was presented in Atlantic Seaboard Corporation v. Federal Power Commission, 29 4 Cir., 201 F.2d 568, and jurisdiction under Section 19(b) was sustained. I have searched in vain for those facts or legal principles which have led my Brothers to state, We think that case is clearly distinguishable from the case at bar. And to it may now be added Phillips Petroleum Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 30 10 Cir., 227 F.2d 470. See also, Isbrandtsen Co., Inc., v. United States, 93 U.S.App.D.C. 293, 211 F.2d 51, certiorari denied Japan Atlantic and Gulf Conference v. United States, 347 U.S. 990, 74 S.Ct. 852, 98 L.Ed. 1124; Algonquin Gas Transmission Co. v. Federal Power Commission, 1 Cir., 201 F.2d 334. If the order is the only one which can ever be entered and no collateral proceeding depends upon it, it is sufficiently final, when realistically appraised, to permit reviewability where, on the hypothesis or substantial showing of doubtful validity, great and pressing harm will flow. 31 68 Nor, in my view, does reviewability of the Suspension Cases depend finally on invalidity of the regulation forbidding automatic escalation. The parties raised other and substantial questions concerning the sufficiency of the administrative process. These include the repeated use of stereotyped suspension orders magnified in several instances by other stereotyped denials of rehearing and whether such rubber-stamped treatment met the demands of the statute that the Commission, in suspending, shall deliver to the natural-gas company affected thereby a statement in writing of its reasons for such suspension, Section 4(e); Amarillo-Borger Express v. United States, supra, and Long Island Railroad Company v. United States, supra. And, as to at least two of them (Stanolind 15627 and Continental 15678), the action bordered upon complete administrative irresponsibility since for the very same contracts covering the very same gas out of the very same wells, the Commission found, in the stereotyped rubric, that the identical rate should be suspended as to one seller but not as to a co-seller. In this and the other respects the State Tax Escalation Cases likewise fit in this category.