Court Opinion

ID: 9639349
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 16:13:40.378527+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:35:26.767158
License: Public Domain

HUTCHESON, Circuit Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the judgment of reversal. I think it plain that the rate made the subject of the reparation order was not one which had been specifically promulgated by the Commission. I think it equally plain that, speaking generally, the rate had received the Commission’s approval and sanction.
I understand appellee to contend that in either event reparation could not have been ordered.
In my opinion neither specific approval by the Commission of a general schedule of .rates, nor the specific promulgation of a particular rate, prevents the Commission from granting reparation as to that rate, if, upon complaint, it is advised that reparation should be made.
I place my concurrence on the broad ground, therefore, that it is immaterial whether the rate made the subject of the reparation order was, as the trial court held, Commission-made, or as the Court of Appeals holds, carrier-made. If a shipper has been injured by it, the Commission, and the Commission alone, may order reparation.
*446By the Transportation Act Congress has placed squarely upon the carriers the burden of establishing and maintaining just and reasonable rates, has made the carriers responsible in damages to any person injured by their failure to do so, and has directed the Commission to hear the shipper’s complaint and if well founded, to award damages thereon.
By a long line of decisions built upon Texas & P. Ry. Co. v. Abilene Cotton Oil Co., 204 U. S. 426, 27 S. Ct. 350, 51 L. Ed. 553, 9 Ann. Cas. 1075, the character of the Interstate Commerce Commission, its functions as a “tribunal informed by experience” to decide rate questions between carrier and shipper, the limits, the extent of its powers, the sphere within which and the method by which it may and must operate, have been carefully worked out and set down.
In addition, the Interstate Commerce Commission has through a long course of practice, and in a series of decisions of its own, built up and established for itself with the sanction and approval of the courts, a character of flexibility in the matter of the approach to, the consideration and determination of, rates and practices, and the results flowing therefrom in which the principle of res judicata or estoppel by decision has had and can have no just place.
It must of course be conceded that Congress could have by enactment at any time changed this settled character of the Commission and converted it into a body not supervisory and regulatory of carrier rates as it now is, but one which like the state commissions shall in a rigid and final way, except for direct resort to the courts, fix and prescribe rates. I think it perfectly plain that it has never done so.
In view of the structure and history of the act, the long-continued operations under it, the uniform current of opinion in the Commission and in the courts as to the dual function which permits the Commission prospectively to control the course of rates while preserving its power to retrospectively correct them and to award damages for injustices and injuries which have flowed from their establishment; in view of the fact that though the act now invoked to deprive the Commission of this power of re-examination has long been in existence, this is the first ease in which such a holding has been sought —I think it plain that those who would maintain that Congress intended a different character for the Commission should be prepared to point to some clear enactment carrying that intention.
The invoked decisions of the state courts do not support the position of appellee here. They make strongly against it. They show that instead of the states having a rate-making system like the federal one, not rigid, but flexible, which permits its commissions from time to time and at any time to malee orders changing rates, correcting abuses, reforming conditions, and awarding reparations, while in reliance upon the power of the Commission to retroactively repair injuries sustained as the result of their prospective orders, shippers may experimentally try out rates before resorting to the courts for relief, their systems are rigid and inflexible.
Under their systems their Commissions make their rates, and until set aside by the courts they are final and conclusive on carrier and shipper alike.
In the state of Texas, for- example, the law requires, not the carriers, but the Commission to establish reasonable rates. It provides for a review by the courts of any rate, classification order, etc., adopted by the Commission whether at suit of carrier or shipper, in which the unreasonableness or injustice, not of the carrier’s, but of the Commission’s rates and practices may be brought into question. Unless upon a timely suit the rates are found unreasonable, they are by law made uncontrovertible as between carrier and shipper. Missouri-Kansas & T. R. Co. v. Railroad Commission (Tex. Civ. App.) 3 S.W.(2d) 469; Producers’ Refining Co. v. Missouri, K. & T. R. Co. (Tex. Com. App.) 13 S.W.(2d) 679. While in Louisiana though the Commission has the right to award damages, the statute limits the damages which may be awarded to those resulting from “violation of rates, classifications, rules, regulations or orders adopted by the Commission.” Texas & P. R. Co. v. Railroad Commission of Louisiana, 137 La. 1059, 69 So. 837, 839.
The courts in both of these states, in fact in all of the states, decisions from which are cited by appellee, give full recognition to the difference in the character and structure of the jurisdiction exercised by the Interstate Commerce Commission and that exercised by their own commissions.
In the opinion of the Circuit Court of Appeals in Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe R. Co. v. Arizona Grocery Co., 49 F.(2d) 563, 568, holding that the Commission eould not award reparation as to the rates specifically theretofore prescribed by it, it is said that under such circumstances “the shipper’s remedy would be a seasonable application for a *447change of rate before any serious damage had been suffered.”
In my opinion this will not do. This is indeed the remedy, and the only remedy, the shipper has under the state system. This is, however, not the ease under the federal system. Here the remedy is simpler, more efficacious, more reasonable, more just to shipper and carrier alike, and more consonant with the experimental character of rates and rate making. This system permits rates to be experimentally laid down and experimentally tried out. It preserves that flexibility of adaptation, the maintenance of which is necessary to the life and growth of our great and changing commerce, which would be lost and defeated if immediate resort to the courts were necessary, as in the state systems, to protect the rights of shippers against the burdens of an experimental rate.
This system, without fixation or rigidity, leaves it to the Commission to deal justly and fairly by carrier and shipper alike, authorizing it to use its powers to effect and maintain a reasonable rate structure through constant experiment and change, while preserving to it the right at any time upon complaint to relieve by specific reparation awards those who have suffered from temporary or particular inequalities and imperfections of this rate structure.
For the courts to now hold, in the absence of some specific and compelling congressional command, that sueh a system, so flexible, so reasonable, so adapted and adaptable to the commerce of this nation, so long an integral part of its operations under the sanction of the courts, is not in accordance with the law, would be in my opinion unwise, unreasonable, and wholly without legal warrant.