Opinion ID: 1938909
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Hardship to the Parties

Text: The second element of the Abbott Laboratories test is the hardship to the parties of withholding court consideration. As the court explained in Eagle-Picher Industries, supra, the purpose of the `hardship to the parties' analysis is to ascertain if the harm that deferring review will cause the petitioners outweighs the benefits it will bring the agency and the court. 245 U.S.App.D.C. at 192, 759 F.2d at 918. In this case it appears that both the agency and the petitioner have an affirmative interest in resolving the matter immediately, rather than in wasting time and money in complying, or requiring compliance, with the rule and litigating its validity thereafter. If we were eventually to declare the challenged rule to be invalid, we might well have to remand the proceedings to the Commission and direct it to make difficult adjustments in its rate order, or perhaps even to start the ratemaking process all over again. Neither the Commission nor WGL would gain anything from that. Arguably, therefore, there are no conflicting interests to balance, and the hardship test need not be addressed. Id.; see also Osmundsen v. Todd Pacific Shipyard, 755 F.2d 730, 733 n. 2 (9th Cir.1985). Nevertheless, even assuming that there are conflicting interests to balance, we believe the balance favors immediate review. In Continental Air Lines, supra, the court aptly described the position in which WGL finds itself: Characteristically, the hardship of delayed review is that it places those who seek it in the following dilemma: in the meantime they must either comply with the agency's policy, at some expense which they maintain is unnecessary, or they must risk incurring the sanctions for noncompliance should they turn out to be wrong. 173 U.S.App.D.C. at 20, 522 F.2d at 126. In the wake of Order No. 8005, WGL is deprived of the assurance that it will recover, as a just and reasonable operating expense (which FERC has determined it to be), that portion of its wholesale costs representing interstate pipeline company payments to GRI. If we decline judicial review at this time, the company will be forced to prove, on an independent record before the Commission, the perfected benefit [4] of GRI's research and development program to District of Columbia ratepayers. As GRI points out in its reply brief: The burden thereby thrust upon WGL is a significant one. The GRI R & D program approved by the FERC in its latest annual review calls for a budget of $164 million, with which 260 discrete R & D projects, covering diverse and often esoteric fields of endeavor, will be funded. That a meaningful attempt to document and explain the perfected benefit of such a program would be a substantial and burdensome undertaking cannot be subject to serious doubt. WGL is clearly faced with a Hobson's choice. If WGL refuses to assume the heavy burden thrust upon it on the basis that the Commission's rule is legally invalid, and the rule is upheld, its alreadyslim hopes of cost recovery will be reduced to nil. The potential adverse consequences of non-compliance are, therefore, significant and very real. To the extent, therefore, that the hardship factor need be addressed at all, it resolves the ripeness issue in favor of WGL. Accordingly, because both parts of the Abbott Laboratories test are satisfied, and because the ripeness doctrine is to be applied in a pragmatic and commonsense manner, Eagle-Picher Industries, supra, 245 U.S.App.D.C. at 192-193, 759 F.2d at 918-919, we hold that the issue of federal preemption, at least, is ripe for review on this appeal. [5]