Court Opinion

ID: 9443106
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 19:11:13.875476+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:29:22.577176
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing and Motion for Leave to Adduce Additional Evidence.
After the entry of our decision affirming the order of the Federal Trade Commission and granting its cross petition to enforce, petitioner filed petition for rehearing and" a motion for leave to adduce additional evidence under § 11 of the Clayton Act, IS U.S.C.Á. § 21.
Section 11 authorizes the court to order such additional evidence to be taken before the Commission if the movant “shall show to the satisfaction of the court that such additional evidence is material and that there were reasonable grounds for the failure to adduce such evidence in the proceeding before the Commission”.
The evidence petitioner now seeks to add to the record is intended to show that if the Robinson-Patman Act requires a buyer to prove its seller’s cost justification, the statute imposes so heavy a burden on it as to amount to a deprivation of due process because such proof is not, available or is impossible.
As grounds for its motion petitioner asserts that (1) the evidence is material in that this court held that the defense of lack of due process was not available to petitioner because it failed to come forward with evidence pertaining thereto; and (2) that there were reasonable grounds for failure to adduce it because it proceeded on the theory that there was no rational connection between the proven fact of receipt of price differentials and the presumption that (a) such differentials were unlawful and (b) petitioner knew this fact.
We find no merit in petitioner’s motion. It tried its case before the Commission on the theory that the Commission had the burden of proving absence of cost justification, and it contended that the Commission failed to sustain that burden, hence that it failed to prove its case, and for that reason petitioner simply refrained from introducing any evidence in defense. What it is now asking for is, in effect, to have the entire proceeding reopened in order to enable it to have a new hearing on a new theory of defense after it has had an adverse *440decision as to the theory originally relied upon in full and fair hearing before the Commission, and review of all issues raised on the record as made in that hearing. We think § 11 was not intended for any such purpose. This was not the “mere omission 'of some step which has escaped the attention of both parties” referred to in Kelly v. United States, 300 U.S. 50, 54, 57 S.Ct. 335, 338, 81 L.Ed. 507, cited by petitioner. There is considerable difference between the failure to authenticate a record, the situation in that case, and the failure to offer any evidence, relying upon a theory of defense subsequently held to be without merit. We find no such “reasonable grounds for the failure to adduce such evidence in the proceeding before the Commission” as would justify the granting of the motion.
With respect to the petition for rehearing, we find that it presents no questions which were not fully considered by us in our original review of the petition and cross petition.
Petition for rehearing and motion to ad-/ duce additional evidence denied. /