Opinion ID: 398195
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: adoption testimony

Text: 3 Early in the proceedings the Joint Board determined that the testimony of many supporting public witnesses was quite similar and to some extent cumulative. It therefore directed the parties to develop and use an adoption procedure whereby public witnesses whose testimony would be substantially the same as that of prior witnesses who had testified individually could adopt in substance the testimony of the prior witnesses. 1 Supplemental Appendix (S.App.) at 8-9. The Board required that these witnesses adopt the entire testimony of specific prior witnesses from the same or nearly the same locations. The adopted testimony thus incorporated all qualifications and admissions elicited from both direct and cross-examination. 4 Under the circumstances, the Board's use of adoption testimony was entirely appropriate. Trailways presented 423 public witnesses in support of its application; Greyhound presented 390 public witnesses in opposition. Faced with the prospect of over 800 witnesses, the Board naturally sought procedures to expedite the taking of testimony. While 344 of Trailways' witnesses and 142 of Greyhound's witnesses eventually testified by adoption, the Board still heard the full individual testimony of 327 witnesses. Even with the adoption procedure, the testimony of Trailways' witnesses alone took six days to complete, and the entire hearing lasted 19 days. The Board estimated that without the procedure the entire hearing could easily have lasted three times as long as it did. S.App. at 9. 5 Formal evidentiary requirements cannot be woodenly applied to the administrative setting. The ICC's own rules allow for flexibility in the admission of evidence in order to achieve efficiency, 2 see 49 C.F.R. § 1100.73 (1980), and the courts have long recognized that evidentiary rules used in judicial proceedings do not control the more flexible administrative process, see, e.g., ICC v. Baird, 194 U.S. 25, 44, 24 S.Ct. 563, 569, 48 L.Ed. 860 (1904) (ICC's function is largely one of investigation and it should not be hampered    by those narrow rules which prevail in trials). Where the adoption procedure is not used as a substitute for oral testimony but as a supplement to it, we think the practice has merit.