Court Opinion

ID: 9456853
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 20:04:06.013529+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:35:07.294969
License: Public Domain

STEVENS, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
The petition for rehearing prompts me to add an additional word further explaining my agreement with Judge Cummings.
A primary purpose of the Interstate Commerce Act as originally enacted in 1887 was to protect shippers, consignees and consumers from what was feared to be undue monopolistic power of certain carriers.1 In time the primary purpose of the legislation was converted into the protection of carriers from competition among themselves and from other forms of transportation.2 In this case a carrier seeks to extend the protective policy of the statute in order to be held harmless from credit losses resulting directly from its own flagrant disregard of regulations promulgated under the statute. To accomplish this noble end it would require an innocent consignee to defray freight costs exactly double the amount contemplated by the applicable tariffs. As Judge Cummings’ opinion demonstrates, the cases on which appellant relies do not remotely justify any such perverse result.

. 24 Stat. 379 et seq.; see Huntington, “The Marasmus of the I.C.C.: The Commission, the Railroads and the Public Interest,” 61 Tale L.J. 467, 470-71 (1952).

. See Transportation Act of 1920, 41 Stat. 456 et seq.; Motor Carrier Act, 1935, 49 Stat. 543 et seq.; Reed-Bulwinkle Act of 1948, 62 Stat. 472 et seq.