Court Opinion

ID: 9419371
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:49:08.489906+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:17.735075
License: Public Domain

Me. Justice Douglas,
concurring:
Commissioner Splawn dissented from the report of the Commission in this case. 248 I. C. C. 441, 446-447. He noted that respondent’s tariff “in no wise affects the amount of the rates paid for the inbound service to the mill point,” its only effect being to “reduce the outbound rate and thus make applicable the same rate as applies when the outbound haul is performed entirely by the trunk lines.” In his view, the outbound traffic is “free” traffic, as that term was used in Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. United States, 279 U. S. 768. That is to say, “it is traffic which has previously moved in on local or joint rates to the milling point and has there come to rest.” Hence the fact that respondent is not a party to the inbound rates is “without legal significance.” Commissioner Splawn concluded that the decision of the Commission violated “all principles of justness and fairness as it precludes respondent from participating in the outbound movement or in the through movement of the traffic from common origins on an equality of rates with the trunk lines.” The fact that no other carrier is a party to respondent’s tariff containing the cut-back provision and that respondent absorbs the allowances out of its proportion of the joint outbound rate was unimportant in his view. As he stated, “The identical facts are true of the tariffs and practice of at least one of the intervening trunk lines” — tariffs which concededly constituted *559the necessity for respondent’s tariff. Moreover, as he observed, “there can be no doubt that the provision is lawful as to outbound traffic to points reached by respondent over its line.” That traffic would seem to be as “local” as the transit privilege which this Court held in Central R. Co. of New Jersey v. United States, 257 U. S. 247, a carrier might establish for its individual tariff, even though there was a joint through route with joint rates. So I would be inclined to support the judgment of the court below in setting aside the order of the Commission at least to the extent that the court allowed the tariff to apply on outbound traffic to points on respondent’s own line.
But I am voting for a reversal of the judgment of the court below in the view that the case should be returned to the Commission for adequate findings.
Although there are two reports on this problem — one by the full Commission and one by a division of the Commission — they have an obscurity and vagueness which two full arguments before this Court have not dispelled. Commissioner Splawn complained without success of the lack of findings under § 1 (6), § 6 (1), and § 6 (4). But if we pass by those deficiencies and cut and sew the meager materials at hand into the pattern which we guess the Commission had in mind, there are still important questions left unanswered. (1) The tariffs containing the joint outbound rates specifically authorize “privileges, charges and rules” to be covered by separate tariffs even though the joint or through rate is affected, provided the carrier granting the privilege does so upon its own responsibility and at its own cost. We are not informed why that provision does not authorize appellee’s proposed tariff at least to the extent that it applies to outbound traffic to points on appellee’s line. (2) If concurrence of the other carriers to appellee’s tariff is necessary, we are not told why the foregoing provision of the joint tariff is not *560adequate. (3) In case that provision of the tariff covering joint rates is not applicable, there is another phase of the problem which is in the dark. The Commission does not seem to deny that this traffic was “free” traffic within the rule of Atchison, T. & S. F. Ry. Co. v. United States, supra. It was merely concerned with the “form and manner” of the tariff. But we are not told why appellee’s tariff is not within the rule of Central R. Co. of New Jersey v. United States, supra, so far as the tariff specifies the rate from milling points to destinations on appellee’s line. The rule governing the right of carriers to initiate rates has not changed. United States v. Chicago, M., St. P. & P. R. Co., 294 U. S. 499, 506.
Mr. Justice Cardozo speaking for the Court stated in that case, “We must know what a decision means before the duty becomes ours to say whether it is right or wrong.” 294 U. S. p. 511. That was said about another obscure and vague report of the Interstate Commerce Commission. We should say the same thing about the present report. The questions left unanswered by this report may be simple ones to experts. But we should have those answers before we put the imprimatur of this Court on the Commission’s order.
Me. Justice Black, Me. Justice Muephy, and Me. Justice Rutledge join in this opinion.