Court Opinion

ID: 9618719
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 05:16:19.948559+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:31.515283
License: Public Domain

BRYAN, District Judge
(dissenting).
In my opinion the report of Division 5, dated August 15, 1949, is invalid because it fails to make any basic findings to sustain its ultimate finding. I cannot agree with the Court’s opinion that an ultimate finding is all that is required by law; U. S. v. Pierce Auto Freight Lines, 327 U.S. 515, 533, 66 S.Ct. 687, 90 L.Ed. 821; Hudson Transit Lines v. U. S., D.C., 82 F.Supp. 153, 155, affirmed 338 U.S. 802, 70 S.Ct. 59; Administrative Procedure Act, sec. 8(b), 5 U.S.C.A. § 1007(b), and I search the record in vain for subordinate findings.
To be sure, there are summaries of evidence and observations. If they be taken as findings they deny the Commission’s conclusion. Thus the report recites that, as to the confusion in flagging the buses, applicant’s drivers say, “the tendency is for fewer persons” to do so; as to Norfolk-Southern buses, even applicant’s witnesses believe them “satisfactory” although crowded “on some occasions * * * during the war years”; as to schedules, the frequency of service is shown to be ample; and as to Norfolk Southern’s deficit, it is “through no fault of its own” and it has “an expense factor below the average” and “its management * * * good and efficient”. Again, the observations that “there is no showing that the deficit results from its operations” over the route in question, and “there is no convincing evidence that removal of the restriction would deprive Norfolk-Southern of a material amount of traffic” are valueless. Too obvious to need proof is the proposition that withdrawal of the restriction would neither lessen the deficit, nor lessen the decline of traffic over the Norfolk-Southern. So no penultimate “finding” sustains the ultimate.
Consequently, I can find no “rational basis” for the order. The Commission presumably had ground to impose the restriction. I would like to know its ground for cancelling it.
I would enjoin the enforcement of the present order until the Commission makes the findings required by law and enters its order thereon.