Opinion ID: 307053
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Mootness and Reviewability

Text: 10 AT counters with the contention that, no matter how erroneous, the dismissal on 17 October 1969 cannot be reviewed here because it was in fact vacated by the FPC and that action was appealed to this court. It is true that this court dismissed the Association's petition for review of the dismissal once a reopened investigation had begun. 11 However, that petition to this court, on 16 January 1970, was based exclusively on a challenge to the FPC's ruling that the record could not be updated. Once the Commission started an updating proceeding, that claim necessarily became moot. Quite distinct is the further claim now advanced here: that the FPC erred in not ordering (in its 5 May and 18 May 1971 orders) retroactive application of the just rate to put the Association in the position it would have held absent the Commission's first error. This latter claim could not even be properly raised until the Commission entered a final and reviewable order in the rate proceeding itself. This court's dismissal of the first petition to review could not, therefore, have either dealt with a claim for retroactive relief or established that such a claim was mooted by the FPC's vacation of its own dismissal of the Section 5 claim. 12 As this court had given leave to do, the Association on 15 April 1971 moved to reinstate its petition (of 16 January 1970) to review the 17 October 1969 dismissal on the ground that the FPC had not expedited its decision. That motion was denied by this court on 25 May 1971. Far from a ruling on the retroactivity issue presented here, that order merely noted that the orderly process of judicial consideration would be served by considering the Association's various claims during the regular review of the order of 5 May 1971. 13 Thus, the appropriate relief for the FPC's error in delaying reopening to update the record remains a valid and important question before this court. To hold otherwise would be now to preclude the Association from raising a claim which has previously been unavailable to it because not yet ripe.