Opinion ID: 187401
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 9

Heading: Evidence of Product or Geographic Competition

Text: Finally, the railroads complain about the Board's preclusion of evidence of product or geographic competition. They argue that the Board never provided notice that it was considering barring such evidence, but given that the Board initially proposed barring all evidence offered to disturb the result of the three benchmark calculation, the Board's eventual rule barring some evidence represented a logical outgrowth of the proposal. Ass'n of Battery Recyclers, Inc. v. EPA, 208 F.3d 1047, 1058 (D.C.Cir.2000) (internal quotation marks omitted); see also id. at 1059 (EPA proposed allowing alternative standards for remediated soils.... One would logically conclude that EPA could have ended up allowing alternative standards for all soils as the proposal suggested, for no soils, oras it turned outfor some soils.). On the merits, the railroads argue only that the Board failed to consider the possibility that parties could present such evidence without the need for discovery. But no commenter suggested to the Board that such evidence, which the Board had previously excluded from full SAC cases due to the discovery and other burdens it caused, Market Dominance Determinations Prod. & Geographic Competition, 3 S.T.B. 937, 946-47 (1998), could be presented without discovery. Given that, the Board hardly acted arbitrarily in failing to consider that point.