Opinion ID: 186699
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Three-Year Time Limit

Text: 11 Subsections 11701(a) and (c) of Title 49 provide in pertinent part: 12 (a) Except as otherwise provided in this part, the Board may begin an investigation under this part only on complaint. 13 . . . 14 (c) A formal investigative proceeding begun by the Board under subsection (a) of this section is dismissed automatically unless it is concluded by the Board with administrative finality by the end of the third year after the date on which it was begun. 15 BNSF contends this rate proceeding was begun by the Board under subsection (a), 49 U.S.C. § 11701(c), when Xcel filed its complaint on December 20, 2000. Therefore, BNSF urges, the case was dismissed automatically on December 20, 2003, nearly six months before the Board issued its decision. 16 The Board counters that BNSF forfeited this argument because, even if the three-year limitation applied, BNSF did not raise the point until long after three years had elapsed and the Board had ruled; indeed BNSF first made the argument in a footnote to its petition for reconsideration. On the merits the Board reasons that because the Congress cannot have intended to punish a complainant for agency inaction, the three-year limit must be read to apply only to investigations begun by the Board on its own initiative. This it does by reading the phrase formal investigative proceeding, as used in § 11701(c), to refer not to an investigation begun on complaint of a captive shipper, pursuant to the second clause of § 11701(a), but rather to a Board-initiated investigation otherwise provided in this part and thus within the first or exception clause of § 11701(a). See, e.g., 49 U.S.C. § 722(c) (Board may reopen an investigation); id. § 10704(b) (Board may extend an investigation). The Board contends its interpretation of formal investigative proceeding is consistent with the Commission's reading of the preceding version of § 11701. See 49 U.S.C. § 11701 (1978) (amended 1995). The Commission read the three-year limit in that version of § 11701(c) to apply only to Commission-initiated investigations under § 11701(a), which at the time provided the Commission could begin an investigation not only on complaint but also on its own initiative, id. § 11701(a). See Complaints Filed Pursuant to the Savings Provisions of the Staggers Rail Act of 1980, 367 I.C.C. 406 (1983). According to the Board, because by 1995 the term `formal investigative proceeding' had an established meaning, the Congress is presumed to have been aware of [that interpretation] when it retained that term. See Lorillard v. Pons, 434 U.S. 575, 580-81, 98 S.Ct. 866, 55 L.Ed.2d 40 (1978). Further, the Board argues that reading the revised statute differently than the Commission read the preceding version would produce an absurd, unfair, and perhaps unconstitutional result because it would depriv[e] Xcel of a decision on the merits of its rate complaint where the delay was not Xcel's fault; more generally, it would, quite perversely, reward any railroad that managed to prolong a rate proceeding beyond the three-year time limit. 17 The Board's concern with due process for shippers may be well-founded. See Logan v. Zimmerman Brush Co., 455 U.S. 422, 428, 433-34, 102 S.Ct. 1148, 71 L.Ed.2d 265 (1982) (holding a cause of action is a species of property protected by the Fourteenth Amendment's Due Process Clause and therefore could not constitutionally be extinguished by expiration of 120-day period for state agency to convene fact-finding conference). We need not resolve the issue of the three-year limit, however, because BNSF failed to raise the argument in a timely manner. A reviewing court generally will not consider an argument that was not raised before the agency at the time appropriate under its practice. United States v. L.A. Tucker Truck Lines, Inc., 344 U.S. 33, 37, 73 S.Ct. 67, 97 L.Ed. 54 (1952). BNSF raised this argument when, after three and one half years of proceedings, the Board had ruled against it on the merits and the carrier was petitioning for reconsideration. Assuming its relegation of the argument to a footnote was not itself fatal, cf. United States v. Whren, 111 F.3d 956, 958 (D.C.Cir.1997) (absent extraordinary circumstances... we do not entertain an argument raised for the first time ... in a footnote), the timing surely was. 18 Without identifying the exact moment the argument was forfeited, we are confident it could not have been later than when the Board decided the case because the criteria for granting reconsideration are limited by statute; the Board may not grant a petition for reconsideration except for material error, new evidence, or substantially changed circumstances. 49 U.S.C. § 722(c). The three-year limitation obviously was not new evidence or a changed circumstance, and if it was a material error, the error was induced by BNSF's own failure to raise the argument in good time. Cf. Canady v. SEC, 230 F.3d 362, 364 (D.C.Cir.2000) (agency decision that statute of limitations defense was forfeited by failure to raise argument until motion for reconsideration held not arbitrary or capricious); see also Tex. Mun. Power Agency v. Burlington N. & Santa Fe Ry., STB Docket No. 42056, 2004 WL 2619767, 3 (STB served Sept. 27, 2004) (Board generally does not consider new issues raised for the first time on reconsideration where those issues could have and should have been presented in the earlier stages of the proceeding). In sum, BNSF's argument came too late to command the attention of the Board, let alone that of this court. 19 Still, BNSF protests, the statutory provision for automatic dismissal is a mandatory directive and therefore leaves no discretion to the agency to treat its claim as having been forfeited. Even a defect in the jurisdiction of an agency, however, when not timely raised before that agency is forfeit, see USAir, Inc. v. DOT, 969 F.2d 1256, 1259-60 (D.C.Cir. 1992) (challenge based upon 90-day deadline for agency action forfeit when not raised before agency), unless it concerns the very composition or `constitution' of [that] agency, Mitchell v. Christopher, 996 F.2d 375, 378 (D.C.Cir.1993), which BNSF's objection does not. Compare Arbaugh v. Y & H Corp., ___ U.S. ___, ___, 126 S.Ct. 1235, 1244, 163 L.Ed.2d 1097 (2006) (subject matter jurisdiction, because it involves the court's power to hear a case, can never be forfeited or waived) (citation omitted).