Court Opinion

ID: 9454333
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 18:43:27.091943+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:04.559188
License: Public Domain

(concurring in part):
I join in Judge TAMM’S opinion except as to Part I. The essential defect in this proceeding as it reaches us is that the Commission has, for seemingly obvious reasons and after two full years of rumination, decided the case on a basis different from that on which it was brought, tried, and decided by the Trial Examiner. See 81 Harv.L.Rev. 1352-1356 (1968). This denied respondents an opportunity to defend, either by evidence or argument, against a charge palpably different from the one brought against them. In this posture it seems inappropriate to me for this court to weigh the merits of the Commission’s findings on the various violations charged. The proper relief for us to give is, in my view, to vacate the Commission’s order and to remand to the Commission. The Commission would then presumably have the alternatives of either (1) appraising the Trial Examiner’s findings in the context of the record made with reference to the charge that respondents’ advertising is false because the material in the books it promotes is false, or (2) convening new evidentiary hearings on the question of whether the advertising is false because it does not reflect accurately what is in the books. The apparent staleness of this whole matter raises, as Judge TAMM foreshadows in Part III, a substantial question as to whether either alternative is wholly the part of wisdom.