Opinion ID: 185452
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order

Text: 10 The Federal Rules of Appellate Procedure govern procedure in the United States courts of appeal, Fed. R. App. P. 1, as do the Circuit Rules of our Circuit. See Circuit Rule 1. Rule 15(a) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure requires that a petition for review specify the order or part thereof to be reviewed. Fed. R. App. P. 15(a)(2)(C). Failure to specify the correct order can result in dismissal of the petition. Entravision Holdings, LLC v. FCC, 202 F.3d 311, 312 (D.C. Cir. 2000). A mistaken or inexact specification of the order to be reviewed will not be fatal to the petition, however, if the petitioner's intent to seek review of a specific order can be fairly inferred from the petition for review or from other contemporaneous filings, and the respondent is not misled by the mistake. Id. at 313 (collecting cases). It is undisputed that the petitioner failed to specify the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order in its petition for review filed December 29, 1999. 5 Accordingly, we examine not only the petition for review but also other documents contemporaneously filed therewith to determine whether we can fairly infer the petitioner's intent to seek review of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order. Our caselaw provides instructions for undertaking this task. 11 In Entravision Holdings LLC v. FCC, the petitioner, Entravision, specified only the order denying reconsideration and not the underlying order it later sought to challenge in its brief. Entravision, 202 F.3d at 312. Even though Entravision's petition noted the underlying order in setting out the history of the proceedings, the court held that it could not determine whether Entravision intended to seek review of the underlying order. It then looked at Entravision's contemporaneous filings. See id. at 314. Entravision's docketing statement, 6 filed within one month of its petition, also specified only the reconsideration order. Additionally, Entravision's Preliminary Statement of Issues, 7 filed the same day, identified only two issues, both of which relate[d] exclusively to the Commission's denial of reconsideration. Id. After looking at the contemporaneously filed documents as well as the petition for review, the court concluded that it cannot fairly infer that [Entravision] intended to seek review of the [underlying order]. Id. 12 By contrast, in Martin v. FERC, 199 F.3d 1370, 1371-73 (D.C. Cir. 2000), the court held that the petitioner's intent to seek review of the Certificate Order, instead of the Rehearing Order specified in its petition, was evident from a contemporaneously filed (same day) motion to stay. The court found that by attaching to the motion a copy of his application for rehearing, in which the petitioner took issue with the Certificate Order, the petitioner had sufficiently identified the Certificate Order as the order from which his challenge to the Commission action arose. Additionally, the court found that the nature of the motion to stay itself sufficed to indicate that the petitioner's purpose in filing his petition for review was to obtain review of the Certificate Order. The court also looked at the docketing statement which indicated he was challenging the Certificate Order as well as the Rehearing Order. Id. at 1373. Finally, the court found that the Commission understood the petitioner to be challenging the Certificate Order as was apparent from its responsive filings. See id.; see also Schoenbohm v. FCC, 204 F.3d 243, 245-46 (D.C. Cir. 2000) (fair to infer intent from concise statement of reasons required by 47 U.S.C. 402(c) to be filed together with notice of appeal, which failed to specify correct decision). 13 We came to the opposite conclusion in Southwestern Bell Telephone Co. v. FCC, 180 F.3d 307, 313 (D.C. Cir. 1999). There, the petitioner, Southwestern Bell, requested the court to consider its petition for review of a reconsideration order, which the court held was unreviewable, to include an investigation order, which was reviewable. The court denied the request. It noted that the petition for review named only the reconsideration order and only that order was appended to the petition, see id., and that the docketing statement mentioned and attached only the reconsideration order. Finally, the court stated that Southwestern Bell's Preliminary Statement of Issues both began and ended by referring to the reconsideration order and included only those issues raised in its petition for reconsideration. The court concluded: In short, nothing prior to the brief filed in this court (by appellate counsel) gave the Commission any notice of Southwestern Bell's intent to seek review of the Investigation Order. Nor should that intent have been obvious. Id. 14 In City of Benton v. NRC, 136 F.3d 824 (D.C. Cir. 1998) (per curiam), the petitioner conceded that it had named the wrong order in its petition. Nevertheless, it argued that the Nuclear Regulatory Commission was not prejudiced because the agency knew which order it wanted to challenge. The court explained that [w]hichever order ACC intended to ask the court to review, it named the wrong order in its petition. Fed. R. App. P. 15(a) requires that ACC's petition be dismissed for failing properly to designate the order to be challenged. Id. at 826 (emphasis original). The court, citing John D. Copanos & Sons, Inc. v. FDA, 854 F.2d 510, 527 (D.C. Cir. 1988), noted that a petition for review designating only one order issued in an administrative proceeding was not adequate to obtain review of any other order included in the same administrative record. The court rejected the reasoning of Castillo-Rodriguez v. INS, 929 F.2d 181, 183 (5th Cir. 1991) (refusing to allow a mere technicality in pleading to result in a denial of an opportunity for petitioner to obtain a decision on the merits and concluding that we should treat the petition for review of the immigration judge's order as 'effective, although inept, attempt' to seek review of the final order of the Board), and dismissed the petition. 15 These cases illustrate that the court considers not only the contents of the petition for review but also any documents affixed thereto or filed contemporaneously therewith in ascertaining the petitioner's intent. Here SBT failed to designate in its petition for review the order that it ultimately challenged in its brief. SBT's Petition for Review named only the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order; it included neither the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order nor the Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order. SBT attached only the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order to its petition. Likewise, SBT's Certificate As To Parties, Rulings and Related Cases, filed January 6, 1999, failed to mention either upper channel order; the Certificate designated only the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order and the underlying Lower Channel Report and Order. 8 16 SBT also filed a Docketing Statement on January 6, 1999, listing the docket numbers as PR Doc. No. 93-144; GN Doc. No. 93-252; PP Doc. No. 93-253. In Entravision, Martin and Southwestern Bell, the court considered the Docketing Statement as a contemporaneous filing from which it could infer the petitioner's intent. Although the two lower channel and two upper channel orders at issue share the same docket number, the manner in which the petitioner described the dates of the orders indicates to us that it sought review of the lower channel orders only. It described the orders as: Released Dates: MO&O, 10/8/99; Second Order, 7/10/97. Its use of Second Order instead of Second Orders or Second Order and Reconsideration Order manifests that it sought review of only one of the July 10, 1997 orders. SBT's description of the challenged order as Second Order also indicates that it sought review of the Lower Channel Report and Order, which was entitled Second Report and Order, and not the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order, which was entitled Memorandum Opinion and Order on Reconsideration. And, as we have held in the past, the petitioner's designation of only one order does not suffice[ ] to obtain review of any other order that is part of the same administrative record even if the order specified has the same docket number as another order sought to be reviewed. John D. Copanos & Sons, 854 F.2d at 527. 17 On April 24, 2000, almost four months after it filed its petition for review, SBT filed a Motion to Amend Certificate as to Parties, Rulings and Related Cases. We do not regard this document to be a filing contemporaneous with the petition for review. The dictionary definition of contemporaneous is existing or occurring during the same time. Webster's Third International Dictionary 491 (1981). 9 We use the term contemporaneous filing to include documents filed at or near the same time as the petition for review. See, e.g., Entravision, 202 F.3d at 313-14; Martin, 199 F.3d at 137173. Although these documents can include Docketing Statements, Certificates as to Parties, Rulings and Related Cases, and Statements of Issues as well as documents attached to the petition for review, the petitioner's motion to amend filed almost four months after its petition for review is plainly not a contemporaneous filing. 10 Moreover, we could easily conclude from the motion to amend that it was not SBT's intent to seek review of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order at the time it filed the petition for review, but instead an afterthought occurring several months down the road. 11 Accordingly, we find nothing in the petition for review or documents filed contemporaneously therewith from which we can fairly infer that the petitioner sought review of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order in its petition for review. 12 18 The petitioner next argues that the Lower Channel Report and Order and the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order are part of a single consolidated rulemaking, thereby making the separate identification of the upper channel order surplusage. To support its contention, SBT points to its Consolidated Supplement to Petitions for Reconsideration filed October 24, 1997, maintaining that it worked to combine the two petitions for reconsideration, both of which were denied in the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order. Nevertheless, SBT had filed two separate petitions for reconsideration: The first request[ed] that the Commission reconsider its decisions within [the Lower Channel Report and Order]. JA 477. The second, filed the same day, request[ed] that the Commission reconsider its decisions within its [Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order]. JA 511. The filing of two separate petitions for reconsideration indicates not only that the Lower Channel Report and Order and the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order are separate orders but also that SBT viewed them as such notwithstanding they arose from the same rulemaking proceeding. 19 Contrary to SBT's claim, moreover, its Consolidated Supplement nowhere expressly requested that the Commission consolidate the petitions for reconsideration. Rather, it argued that the Commission failed to obtain SBA approval of its small business definitions in the Commission's 1997 orders. JA 563. The FCC responded separately to the issues raised in the Supplement, addressing only the issues regarding the lower channel rulemaking in the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order. See Lower Channel Reconsideration Order, 14 F.C.C.R. 17,566, p 87 n.251. Although the Appendix to the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order, listing the petitions addressed in the order, noted an SBT petition for reconsideration as well as SBT's Supplement, by the time the petitioner filed its petition for review (on December 29, 1999), the FCC had issued its Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order, putting SBT on notice that the FCC had also denied SBT's petition for reconsideration of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order. The petitioner's argument that the Commission's Lower Channel Reconsideration Order ignored issues included in its petition for reconsideration of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order further manifests that SBT believed the FCC treated the petitions separately, responding to one in its Lower Channel Reconsideration Order and to the other in its Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order. Accordingly, we must dismiss SBT's petition for review to the extent that it attempts to challenge the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order because it failed to designate that order in accordance with Fed. R. App. P. 15(a)(C). 20 Even if we found no violation of Rule 15(a)(C), we would nevertheless dismiss the challenge to the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order because it is incurably premature. A party that files a petition for reconsideration before an agency render[s] the underlying agency action nonfinal (and hence unreviewable) with respect to th[at] party. United Transp. Union v. ICC, 871 F.3d 1114, 1116 (D.C. Cir. 1989). Therefore, a party that stays before an agency to seek reconsideration of an order cannot at the same time appear before a court to seek review of that same order, any more than the party could literally be in two places at the same time. BellSouth Corp. v. FCC, 17 F.3d 1487, 1489 (D.C. Cir. 1994). 21 The petitioner filed a separate petition for reconsideration of each of the 1997 SMR orders. Its two petitions had the effect of making both the Lower Channel Report and Order and the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order nonfinal as to it, for the purpose of judicial review, until entry of the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order and of the Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order respectively. See 28 U.S.C. 2344. 28 U.S.C. 2344 imposes a jurisdictional bar to judicial consideration of petitions filed prior to entry of the agency orders to which they pertain. Western Union Tel. Co. v. FCC, 773 F.2d 375, 378 (D.C. Cir. 1985). Entry of the agency order[ ] occurs on the date the Commission gives public notice of the order. See 47 U.S.C. 405; 47 C.F.R. 1.103(b); Western Union Tel. Co., 773 F.2d at 376. The FCC's rules identify the date of public notice as the date of publication in the Federal Register. 47 C.F.R. 1.4(b). On December 29, 1999, the date the petitioner filed its petition for review, the Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order denying the petitioner's petition for reconsideration of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order had not been entered, 13 making the petition for review incurably premature as to the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order. BellSouth, 17 F.3d at 1490. 22 SBT responds that the Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order was a duplicate order which again denied SBT's consolidated petitions and supplement. Reply Br. 12. We fail to understand how the petitioner could have rightfully determined that although the duplicate Order did add to the record, it was not significant for the purpose of the Court's jurisdiction. Id. Aside from its bare assertion, the petitioner has no record support for its claim. Paragraph six of the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order states: In response to the [Lower Channel Report and Order], the Commission received a number of pleadings requesting reconsideration, modification or clarification of its rules relating to mandatory relocations, co-channel interference, spectrum block size, geographic area licensing, and partitioning and disaggregation. We address these concerns below. 14 F.C.C.R. 17,566 at p 6. Throughout the Discussion portion of the Lower Channel Reconsideration Order, the Commission primarily referred to the Lower Channel Report and Order. Although it did mention the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order in a limited context, see, e.g., id. at pp 33, 41, 70, it addressed only those arguments presented in SBT's petition for reconsideration of the Lower Channel Report and Order, 14 not SBT's petition for reconsideration of the Upper Channel First Reconsideration Order. 15 We thus find no merit in SBT's contention that the Upper Channel Second Reconsideration Order was a duplicate order relieving it of the obligation to separately challenge that order.