Opinion ID: 508925
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: single-line ratemaking

Text: 3 In 1948 Congress enacted the Reed-Bulwinkle Act, codified (as amended) at 49 U.S.C. Sec. 10706, exempting from the antitrust laws collective rate agreements by motor carriers that received ICC approval. In the Motor Carrier Act of 1980, Pub.L. No. 96-296, 94 Stat. 793, Congress cut back the exemption. One restriction was a prohibition on the collective discussion or voting of single-line rates, 49 U.S.C. Sec. 10706(b)(3)(D), which the Act defined as: 4 a rate, charge, or allowance proposed by a single motor common carrier that is applicable only over its line and for which the transportation can be provided by that carrier. 5 Id. Sec. 10706(b)(1). 6 The Bureau argues that rates for accessorial services do not fall within this provision because they cannot always be provided by the carrier that contracts with the shipper, and often are not. Thus we are told that Clark & Reid is Boston-based and maintains no facilities in Alaska for providing accessorial services. It follows, we are told, that rates for accessorial services provided by Alaska-based movers are therefore not single-line rates; such movers should be free to cartelize them. Such a construction of the Motor Carrier Act would, so far as we can see, restore Reed-Bulwinkle to its former glory. After all, by the same logic Boston-Nome transportation is not single-line, for (except for carriers that can provide accessorial services in both Boston and Nome), each Boston-Nome shipment requires two firms. An agreement between Clark & Reid and a Nome firm on Boston-Nome rates (covering accessorial services as well as transportation) would be a different matter, but is of course not before us. 7 Embarrassingly, petitioners attempt to revive an argument rejected by this court in Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc. v. United States, 780 F.2d 109 (D.C.Cir.1986) (Niagara I ). As a single-line rate must by statute be one proposed by a single motor common carrier that is applicable only over its line, petitioners argue that as the agreed-on rates proposed here would be applicable over the lines of all the Bureau's carriers, they do not fall within this definition. This analysis is staggering. It construes the Motor Carrier Act, concededly designed to reduce cartelization, to authorize cartels for every transaction except those subject to monopoly. 8 Petitioners suggest that one congressional goal was to allow individual carriers to break the cartel, and claim their proposed reading of single-line rate would assure individual carriers that right. But that purpose is fully achieved by the Act's separate provision allowing independent action by a single carrier. See id. at 110 (citing 49 U.S.C. Sec. 10706(b)(3)(B)(ii)). 9 The Bureau argues that we are not bound by Niagara I because of subsequent refinements by the Supreme Court in the degree of deference we owe administrative agencies in statutory construction. See INS v. Cardoza-Fonseca, 480 U.S. 421, 107 S.Ct. 1207, 94 L.Ed.2d 434 (1987). Levels of deference have nothing to do with this case; only a flat rule that administrative agencies are always wrong could drive a court to overturn the ICC's rejection of petitioners' theory. 10 In Niagara I we concluded that petitioners' construction borders on the frivolous. 780 F.2d at 110. The carriers' pressing the theory in this court a second time takes it well past the border of frivolity, deep into the heartland. See also Central & Southern Motor Freight Tariff Ass'n v. United States, 843 F.2d 886, 891-96 (6th Cir.1988); Niagara Frontier Tariff Bureau, Inc. v. United States, 826 F.2d 1186 (2d Cir.1987) (Niagara II ) (applying collateral estoppel against renewed assertion of this theory by the same rate bureau that advanced it in Niagara I ). 11