Opinion ID: 1949340
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 6

Heading: Producer Prices

Text: The court below clearly implied, if it did not decide, that, although the dealer and retail margins set in Orders 76-1 and 76-2 were invalid, the producer prices remained valid. The independence of producer prices from retail and dealer prices is clearly contemplated by the statute. Subsection 2954.2.A requires that the producer prices shall be based on the prevailing. . . prices in southern New England. The parties in this case agree that this means the Boston Federal Market Order price. Subsection 2954.1 provides that the requirement of public hearing may be waived when the only changes to be made in the minimum prices are to conform with the orders of any federal or other agency duly authorized by law to establish or negotiate producer prices. Thus, the statute authorizes the producer prices to be set on the basis of the Boston Federal Market Order and further authorizes the passing through of minimum producer prices, thus determined, into dealer and retailer minimum prices without public hearing. We assume that after this Court affirms the lower court's invalidation of Orders 76-1 and 76-2, the Commission will continue to change minimum producer prices as the Boston prices change and that it will pass through those prices, adding the most recently valid dealer and retail margins until new margins are set. Such was the approach of the court below, and we find no error in that practical solution of the problem created by invalidity of the dealer and retailer margins established in the Commission's two orders. It must be conceded that there is a theoretical anomaly in permitting the combination of current producer minimums with dealer and retailer margins fixed by order of the Commission under the statute as it stood before the extensive revision of 1975. Yet no error has been complained of in the producer minimums set by the 1976 orders, and in such a situation to invalidate the Commission's producer minimums themselves on the ground that the 1976 orders were improperly arrived at would seem to us, as it did to the presiding justice in Superior Court, a doctrinaire ruling that could cause senseless hardship to producers. Moreover, to refuse to permit the passing through of changes in the Boston producer minimum prices could lead to virtual deregulation of pricing in the Maine milk industry pending issuance of new, valid orders by the Commission. That is, without any passing through, Boston producer minimums could rise to the point where the last valid pre-1976 dealer margins would become meaningless because of the dealers' absolute need to avoid losses by raising prices. Either consequence would contravene a basic purpose of the statute.