Court Opinion

ID: 9861423
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 23:58:51.628885+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T11:28:25.595373
License: Public Domain

SHEPARD, Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I agree with the majority's conclusions about most of the statutory and procedural issues presented by this appeal. I do not agree, however, that the constitutional issues presented by the federal parties have been waived. Moreover, I think that these issues cannot really be resolved by issuing a simple dismissal of Wabash Valley's petition in reliance on Citizens Action Coalition v. Northern Indiana Public Service Co. (1985), Ind., 485 N.E.2d 610. Accordingly, I think the dismissal was erroneous.
The Utility Consumer Counselor claimed in his brief before the Court of Appeals that these issues had not been presented to the Commission. Brief of Office of the Utility Consumer Counselor at 23-24. Iam satisfied that National Rural Electric adequately, though barely, preserved the constitutional questions when it resisted the Consumer Counselor's petition to dismiss by asserting that dismissal on statutory grounds would deprive Wabash Valley of rates adequate to survive a Fifth Amendment challenge. Brief of Intervenor National Rural Utilities, Record at 598, 606-609. It is apparent that this assertion presented only a Fifth Amendment takings claim and not a Fourteenth Amendment due process claim. See generally Shepard, Land Use Regulation in the Rehnquist Court: The Fifth Amendment and Judicial Intervention, 88 Cath.U.LRev. 847 (1989).
The parties' debate about waiver before this Court is somewhat different than it was before the Court of Appeals. National Rural Electric seeks transfer on grounds that the Court of Appeals wrongly found waiver. The Consumer Counselor and Wabash Valley Power have both chosen not to respond to this grounds for transfer. Their decision does not operate to concede the issue, but it does yield the field to National Rural Electric.
The merits of the constitutional issues can not be adequately addressed through a motion to dismiss based on our NIPSCO opinion. As Justice Rehnquist has written, judicial determinations of Fifth Amendment takings claims are "essentially ad hoe, factual inquiries." Kaiser Aetna v. United States, 444 U.S. 164, 175, 100 S.Ct. 383, 390, 62 L.Ed.2d 332, 343 (1979). Adjudication of a claim that a regulatory scheme takes a party's property without due compensation in violation of the Fifth Amendment must necessarily be based upon a full evidentiary hearing. Hodel v. Virginia Surface Mining & Reclamation Ass'n, 452 U.S. 264, 101 S.Ct. 2352, 69 L.Ed.2d 1 (1981).
The rate proceeding initiated by Wabash Valley Power was suspended awaiting this Court's decision in the NIPSCO case. It was dismissed promptly afterwards, so there was never developed the sort of full factual record upon which the federal parties' constitutional claims could be adequately addressed. I think these parties are thus entitled to have these claims heard rather than dismissed.
My colleagues express "doubt" that the federal parties have standing to raise these questions when Wabash Valley Power does not do so. The majority does appear to recognize that because the Court rules against the federal parties on grounds of waiver, such "doubt" is not a part of the holding of today's decision. Equally entitled to speculate, I suggest that the eredi-tors are dealing with a debtor which has little interest in seeking rates adequate to pay off. The creditors are in a posture reminiscent of the party who must call a hostile witness in order to prove his case but cannot get much cooperation on the witness stand. In circumstances like that we grant a party the right to lead the witness. I would be inclined to afford the creditors in this litigation the opportunity *31to present issues the debtor seems uninterested in pursuing.