Opinion ID: 2613769
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: assuming the appeal is properly here, the trial court's refusal to suspend the agency decision pending judicial review, coupled with oru's completion of the hospital facility, places this appeal in a posture pre-packaged for oru's victory by a fait accompli

Text: The state/federal dual regulatory system [3] for institutional health services requires a license for much more than the actual operation of a new hospital or of an additional wing. It embraces both offering or development [4] of proposed objects. The phrase clearly includes everything from public solicitation of funds and construction of facilities to rendition of services. [5] Without a CON no hospital bond issue can be sold. Any unlicensed offering or development activity constitutes a misdemeanor. [6] When ORU completed the hospital construction, it did not stop short of performing a function licensed by its CON. It had moved far past the point of commencement and well into the main arena of a statutorily regulated activity even though the hospital had not yet opened its doors. In short, since OHPC's decision in its favor ORU has been in the process of carrying on functions authorized by its unstayed certificate [CON]  not just some activity preparatory to the licensed operations under it. Assuming the appeal is properly here, my other concern  equally serious as that for our jurisdiction in the case  is for the posture in which it comes here. It is pre-packaged for but a single possible form of practical relief affordable  ORU's victory by a fait accompli. The situation results primarily from the trial court's refusal to stay, pending judicial review, the decision of the Oklahoma Health Planning Commission [OHPC] granting ORU its CON. Aided by an ample reservoir of available funds secured from private donations, and unfettered by the restraining hand of a judicial stay order, ORU proceeded to develop and complete the proposed hospital project. [7] The erection of that costly facility does now significantly impair the range of practical choices available to us in the deciding this appeal. If the order appealed from remains unreversed  here and now  the trial court's eventual disposition of the case might condemn to idleness a valuable community resource  at least until another, equally lucrative and fitting, purpose may be found for it. [8] In the context of an administrative proceeding, the appellee, if victorious on appeal, could not secure a mandatory injunction to require ORU's dismantling of the hospital facility. Cf. Moore v. White, Okl., 323 P.2d 352, 355-356 [1958]. Absent most compelling reasons, the judiciary is loath injuriously to affect one's valuable investment made in reliance on a license. [9] So long as this presumably single-purpose building is allowed to remain standing and is unoccupied by some ORU department unrelated to health sciences, it will likely spur ORU's determined efforts to press upon the community its never-to-be withdrawn offer of hospital service to be rendered at the university's medical school. The problem has a distinctly recurrent dimensional sweep. Practical relief here is hence obviously restricted to but a single choice  the option followed by the court's opinion. I do not feel comfortable being placed in this decisional straitjacket. I would declare this controversy moot [10] because the court is impotent to grant any form of practical relief affordable other than handing ORU its victory by a fait accompli. Moreover, I feel that judicial process cannot be administered in the very framework in which it is constitutionally mandated  with detachment and neutrality  when a court is left without the complete and unimpeded freedom to choose from a full range of alternatives dictated by the rule of law rather than by the narrow demands of economic reality and convenience. ORU's successful decision before the agency [OHPC] has now been carried into execution. It cannot be undone here. Public perception of the judiciary's dispute-settling role can hardly be enhanced when a court willingly turns itself into a government bureau to perform no function other than as registrar and herald of one's CON claim which is now irreversibly perfected and judicially unalterable. I would dismiss the appeal. When the district court reaches this case for the second time, I am confident it will make a disposition that is proper under the facts which have transpired since the appeal was brought here.