Court Opinion

ID: 9445287
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 21:24:38.497712+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:30:12.018295
License: Public Domain

BAZELON, Circuit Judge
(dissenting).
At the outset of the hearing before the trial examiner, all the parties, including the Broadcast Bureau, “agreed that the program showings of the respective stations, including statistical analyses of logs, would be limited to the year 1952, except that logs for the 1951 composite weeks were to be made available for use in cross-examination.” KCRA and Broadcasters did not cross-examine each other as to pre-1952 matters. Counsel for the Broadcast Bureau allowed KCRA *694to come and go unscathed, but then cross-examined Broadcasters as to its pre-1952 record. However, neither the applicants nor the Broadcast Bureau requested findings on that issue and the trial examiner made none. Hence there was no reason to expect the Commission to initiate a finding upon that issue and certainly no reason to expect it to attribute decisional importance to such finding. It is plain that both Broadcasters and KCRA considered inconsequential the point seized upon by the Commission as determinative. In these circumstances, I cannot read Johnston as holding that Broadcasters would have used its ammunition against KCRA if it had any.
I am therefore of the view that the Commission abused its discretion in denying the request of Broadcasters, in its petition for rehearing, to “remand the case for further hearing, so that it will have evidence before it concerning KC RA’s record on promise versus performance.”1
I would set aside the order under review and remand the case to the Commission for further hearings and reconsideration.

. Although the reasons advanced for the remand in the petition for rehearing were less specific than could be desired, I am persuaded that they were sufficient in the circumstances of this case.