Court Opinion

ID: 9452662
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 17:48:08.358713+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:33:18.717621
License: Public Domain

ALDRICH, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the court’s opinion with one possible reservation. The court speaks of “hints in the Commission’s supplemental brief that it sees the test in terms of likely death of a system if divestment is ordered.” The supplemental brief seems to me very explicit; the word “hints” is a judicial euphemism for *118“statements.” If this now stated principle is simply an unwarranted frolic on the part of counsel it is regrettable, but no harm is done. The thought lingers, however, that counsel would not make such statements without reason for so doing, and behind the back of their client. While, like the court, I would not myself read the Commission’s opinion as laying down the rule now asserted in the supplemental brief, if in truth this was the principle that the Commission applied, then its findings are even more vulnerable than we have held them to be.
For example, the matter of the asserted reduction in the new system’s rate of return, discussed in the court’s opinion, which the Commission considered to be of inadequate consequence, might well be insufficient to make bankruptcy imminent, if that is the test the Commission in fact applied. On the other hand,, it could well be of great consequence if the test is simply one of serious impairment in the system’s financial circumstances.
I would hope that on the new review this matter will be cleared up, and if it so happens that the Commission did weigh the evidence in the light of the test it now espouses in its supplemental brief, appropriate reconsideration will be given.