Opinion ID: 423647
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: the commission's jurisdiction over the ford motor and

Text: DOD COMPLAINTS 15 In the sections that follow, we describe separately for each case the parties' positions and the ICC's course. We note at the outset, however, a confusion or misperception that pervades the Commission's decisions and its briefs to this court. The term jurisdiction, in the context here relevant, refers to a tribunal's adjudicatory authority over the subject matter and parties before it. See generally RESTATEMENT (SECOND) OF JUDGMENTS ch. 2 introd. note at 27-28, §§ 1, 11 (1980); 13 C. WRIGHT, A. MILLER & E. COOPER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 3522 (1975). Like the adjudicatory authority of a federal court, the ICC's subject matter jurisdiction or competence--the kinds of controversies it may adjudicate--is prescribed by Congress, and is not determined by the Commission's own notions of authority it should or should not have. 16 Failure to join a party, even one determined, after the requisite careful, practically-oriented analysis, to be needed for just adjudication, indeed even one so needed as to attract the conclusion-reporting label indispensable, 6 never strips a tribunal of its subject matter jurisdiction or of its authority over the persons before it. A tribunal which has jurisdiction over the subject matter of a claim generally may impose no dispositive order on an absentee, but it unquestionably has power to enter orders binding the parties it confronts. When a tribunal, such as the ICC in this case, has authority over the subject matter to which the complaint relates, but nonetheless declines to proceed without an absentee, it does so as an exercise of judgmental discretion, not for any want of power to affect the interests of existing parties. See 7 C. WRIGHT & A. MILLER, FEDERAL PRACTICE AND PROCEDURE § 1611 (1972); see also Provident Tradesmens Bank & Trust Co. v. Patterson, 390 U.S. 102, 118-19, 122, 88 S.Ct. 733, 742-43, 744, 19 L.Ed.2d 936 (1968); Park v. Didden, 695 F.2d 626, 627 & nn. 2 & 10 (D.C.Cir.1982). 17 Indeed, the Commission concedes that the defect it now labels jurisdictional, therefore fatal, becomes non-jurisdictional, a surmountable impediment, when the absentee is a foreign carrier. See H.K. Porter Co. v. Central Vermont Railway, 366 U.S. 272, 81 S.Ct. 1341, 6 L.Ed.2d 284 (1961); National Insulation Transportation Committee v. Aberdeen & Rockfish Railroad, 365 I.C.C. 624 (1982) (NITCOM ). Even when absentees are domestic carriers, and [230 U.S.App.D.C. 96] therefore could have been joined because they are subject to the ICC's governance, the Commission, on another day, did not conclude, as it did in the cases at hand, that it must dismiss the parties before it for lack of jurisdiction over their dispute. See Columbian Chemicals Co., supra. 18 Because the Commission in these cases was misled by the 'jurisdiction' fallacy, it did not undertake the relevant inquiry. Fed.R.Civ.P. 19 advisory committee notes on the 1966 amendments; see C. WRIGHT, LAW OF FEDERAL COURTS 465 (4th ed. 1983) (The cases sometimes speak, and even act, as if the failure to join a party who may be regarded as 'indispensable' is a 'jurisdictional' defect. This heresy has been rejected over and over again by authoritative cases.). The ICC rushed to dismiss apparently believing it had no choice but to terminate the proceeding immediately. Brief for the ICC in DOD at 28. Instead, it should have recognized that the cases called for an intelligent exercise of discretion following careful consideration of the particular consequences of the courses open to it. Mindful of its decision not to allow joinder of additional parties once the Staggers Act deadline had passed, 7 the ICC should have determined whether the fairer course was to dismiss peremptorily or to proceed to make the market dominance determinations that would control its further action.