Opinion ID: 411639
Heading Depth: 4
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: Is the Department of Justice a party aggrieved?

Text: 37 If the Department were challenging the Commission order on behalf of the United States' interests as a shipper adversely affected by the operation of Agreement 10140, its qualification as a party aggrieved under the Hobbs Act would not be in doubt. 23 But does the Act authorize the Department to seek review when the Department is seeking to vindicate, not the nation's proprietary interest, but the nation's sovereign interest in law enforcement? The Department argues that it is so authorized for the reason that it is a party aggrieved by the [Commission's] final order, 28 U.S.C. Sec. 2344, in the ordinary meaning of those words. The Department participated and was thus a party in the instant proceeding before the Commission 24 and the Department was aggrieved by the final order inasmuch as the agency action urged by the [Department] on behalf of the public's interest in competition was not adopted. Petitioner's Reply Brief (Pet.Rep.Br.) at 3. Intervenors ignore the party aggrieved language and concentrate on other aspects of the Hobbs Act. We find neither approach satisfactory. 25 Rather, we think analysis must begin with application of what still seem to be the leading cases on standing to seek judicial review of agency action: Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, 397 U.S. 150, 90 S.Ct. 827, 25 L.Ed.2d 184 (1970) and Barlow v. Collins, 397 U.S. 159, 90 S.Ct. 832, 25 L.Ed.2d 192 (1970). 38 Under Data Processing and Barlow, a person may invoke judicial review under a statute as one aggrieved by agency action within the meaning of a relevant statute if he alleges (1) injury in fact, economic or otherwise, and (2) an interest arguably within the zone of interests to be protected or regulated by the statute or constitutional guarantee in question. 397 U.S. at 152-54, 90 S.Ct. at 829-30; id. at 164-65, 90 S.Ct. at 836-37. We conclude the Department can meet those requirements here: it can claim injury in fact in the sense that Commission approval of Agreement 10140 directly interferes with the Department's responsibility to enforce the antitrust laws; and it can claim to assert interests protected by the Shipping Act in the sense that the Department, as public enforcer of the antitrust laws, represents the consumer and shipping interests which are protected by the statutory constraints placed on the Commission's ability to shield anticompetitive schemes from antitrust attack. 39
40 An injury in fact need not be economic; it may be an injury to one's interest in health, safety, recreation, or aesthetics. See, e.g., Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 738, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1367, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1975). But the injury alleged must be one that fairly can be traced to the challenged action of the [respondent], Simon v. Eastern Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 38, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1976), and thus likely to be redressed by the relief requested, id. at 43, 96 S.Ct. at 1926; accord, Duke Power Co. v. Carolina Environmental Study Group, Inc., 438 U.S. 59, 74, 98 S.Ct. 2620, 2630, 57 L.Ed.2d 595 (1978). The purpose of the injury in fact requirement is to give[ ] specificity and concreteness to the controversy and [to] assure [ ] its presentation with adversarial vigor. Washington Utilities & Transportation Commission v. FCC, 513 F.2d 1142, 1149 (9th Cir.), cert. denied, 412 U.S. 836, 96 S.Ct. 62, 46 L.Ed.2d 54 (1975). Although Data Processing, Barlow and other leading Supreme Court cases on standing involved individuals and private organizations, nothing in their analysis precludes its application to public agencies. The purpose of the injury in fact requirement is achieved when agency action interferes directly and specifically with the governmental responsibilities of the public agency. Washington Utilities, supra, 513 F.2d at 1149-51. 26 As the Supreme Court noted long ago in Coleman v. Miller, 307 U.S. 433, 441-42, 59 S.Ct. 972, 976-77, 83 L.Ed. 1385 (1939): there has been recognition of the legitimate interest of public officials and administrative commissions, federal and state, to resist the endeavor to prevent enforcement of statutes in relation to which they have official duties. We therefore consider in what manner, if any, Commission approval of Agreement 10140 interferes with the Department's statutory responsibilities. 41 The Department is charged with the responsibility for enforcing the antitrust laws, 27 which, but for Commission approval, would proscribe agreements such as Agreement 10140. 28 In contending that Agreement 10140 is beyond Commission jurisdiction insofar as it affects land carriage, and that the Agreement should have been disapproved in any event, the Department submits that shippers who deal with the intermodal ocean carriers subject to Agreement 10140 are being deprived of the competition the antitrust laws are designed to effect: such shippers cannot bargain for the best inland carrier rate from a Gulf Coast port to an Atlantic port, but must accept a price that includes the price of inland transport. Unhindered by the obstacle of Shipping Act immunity, the Department would attack the Agreement and prevent the ocean carriers from collectively establishing a single overall rate for intermodal traffic. This action, the Department believes, would increase competition among inland carriers for Gulf/U.K. traffic and thus promote a goal of the antitrust laws the Department is charged to enforce. Under these circumstances, we conclude there is a sufficiently direct line of causation between the allegedly invalid Commission order and an interference with the Department's discharge of its statutory duties, cf., e.g., United States v. S.C.R.A.P., 412 U.S. 669, 688-89 & n. 14, 93 S.Ct. at 2405, 2416 & n. 14, 37 L.Ed.2d 254 (1973), and that such interference is likely to be redressed by a favorable decision. Simon v. Kentucky Welfare Rights Organization, 426 U.S. 26, 38, 96 S.Ct. 1917, 1924, 48 L.Ed.2d 450 (1970). 42
43 A party alleging injury in fact and requesting relief that would redress it must also show that the interest asserted is arguably within the zone of interests protected by the relevant statute. Association of Data Processing Service Organizations v. Camp, supra, 397 U.S. at 152-53, 90 S.Ct. at 829-30. 29 The relevant statute in this case is the Shipping Act, which not only confers but also limits the power of the Commission to legalize anticompetitive agreements between persons subject to the Act, who are defined in Shipping Act Sec. 1, 46 U.S.C. Sec. 801. Section 33, 46 U.S.C. Sec. 832, provides the Act shall not be construed to affect the power of the ICC, and section 15, 46 U.S.C. Sec. 814, forbids the Commission to approve agreements without properly considering principles of antitrust that inhere in the section's public interest standard, see FMC v. Aktiebolaget Svenska Amerika Linien, 390 U.S. 238, 243, 88 S.Ct. 1005, 1008, 19 L.Ed.2d 1071 (1968). These provisions protect shippers both from the approval by the Commission of agreements beyond its jurisdiction and from its improper approval of agreements within its jurisdiction. 44 The Justice Department is entitled, once injured by interference with its own interest in fulfilling its mandate to promote the policies of the antitrust laws, to assert the shipping public's interest in the proper administration of the Shipping Act. [T]he fact of ... injury is what gives a person standing to seek judicial review under the statute, but once review is properly invoked, that person may argue the public interest in support of his claim that the agency has failed to comply with its statutory mandate. Sierra Club v. Morton, 405 U.S. 727, 737, 92 S.Ct. 1361, 1367, 31 L.Ed.2d 636 (1972). Absent clear indication of a contrary congressional intent, we will not hold that the Attorney General, whose title is used to describe the broad standing rights of injured private litigants invoking the public interest, 30 cannot rely on that doctrine himself. 45