Court Opinion

ID: 9794413
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 03:05:20.779304+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:15:46.601270
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Vice Chief Justice,
concurring.
The court holds that the Corporation Commission’s (agency) failure to follow its procedural norms — which require that notice by publication be given of any proposed alteration in a public utility’s rate charges — cannot be judicially sanctioned in the absence of some reasonable explanation. Applying the Accardi1 doctrine to the Commission’s unexplained departure from its procedural rules, the court reverses the agency order allowing a rate increase.
I
ORDERLY PROCEDURE IS A SINE QUA NON OF FUNDAMENTAL FAIRNESS
I wholeheartedly welcome the birth of today’s teaching. It reinforces my own commitment to the notion that fundamental fairness cannot be afforded by any adjudicative process, administrative or judicial, except within a framework of orderly procedure. No area of law may lay claim to exemption from the basic strictures of structured practice2 — not even the law governing utility rate making. Proposed alterations in a public utility’s charges are regulated by the Commission’s rule-governed process.3 Unbounded freedom to depart at will from this ordered system will inevitably bring about chaos, caprice and *1270ad hoc decisions.4 “It is procedure that spells much of the difference between rule by law and rule by whim or caprice. Steadfast adherence to strict procedural safeguards is our main assurance that there will be equal justice under the law.”5 This court should never claim for itself nor for any adjudicative institution of government — court or agency — unrestrained freedom from the applicable rule-imposed procedural regime.6
II
THE ACCARDI DOCTRINE SHOULD BE EXTENDED TO ALL PROCEDURAL RULES GOVERNING AGENCY PROCEEDINGS
Procedural rules, once adopted by a court or agency, should be applied mechanically to avoid the uncertainties that arise when exceptions are created.7 Departure from any rule-imposed procedural regime must be accompanied by a reasoned explanation. This, in essence, is the “Accardi doctrine” we embrace today. The agency action invalidated in Accardi violated procedural regulations having the force of law, which the Attorney General had promulgated pursuant to his congressionally conferred authority.8 Accardi’s actual teaching is more narrow than that made in our pronouncement in this case. It extends only to rules directly authorized by legislatively enacted norms.9 If I were writing for the majority, I would today explicitly extend Accardi, as the court seems to have done implicitly, to all procedural norms that govern an agency’s adjudicative process, whether they implement specific statutory policy or, as in the case before us, only a general grant of power to regulate procedure.10
Whenever an agency fails to comply with one of its procedural rules that is applicable in a given situation at hand, the agency must give a reasoned explanation, on the record, why it refuses to follow the rule’s binding force. No countenance should ever be given to an ad hoc departure from *1271the course of an applicable procedural regime. Such action would inevitably result in inconsistent adjudicative behavior, whether by an agency or a court. Fundamental fairness inexorably requires uniform treatment of all persons confronted by a like procedural context.
Ill
MANDATORY UNIFORMITY OF PROCEDURE UNDER THIS STATE’S FUNDAMENTAL LAW
Rules invocable in the course of an agency’s adjudicative process have the same binding force as do court rules affecting forensic judicature. Courts and agencies alike must hold themselves powerless to grant dispensation from obedience to any self-generated norms of procedure which clearly command in any given posture.11 Uniformity of procedure is plainly mandated by Art. 5, § 46, Okl. Const.12 Just as the legislature itself is powerless to regulate procedure by legal norms not uniformly applicable — i.e., those lacking across-the-board application, but having only “local or special” impact13 — so are the courts as well as all other adjudica-*1272live agencies of government14 Any adjudicator’s at-will departure from a governing rule of adjective law is in plain contravention of our constitution’s prescription against unequal treatment through the use of a discriminatory regime of procedure.
I therefore enthusiastically join today in enforcing fidelity and obedience to an agency’s procedural regime by our reversal of the Commission’s flawed order.15

. United States ex rel. Accardi v. Shaughnessy, 347 U.S. 260, 74 S.Ct. 499, 98 L.Ed. 681 [1954].

. Pryse Monument Co. v. District Court, Etc., Okl., 595 P.2d 435, 438 [1979]; Special Indemn. Fund v. Washburn, Okl., 722 P.2d 1204, 1211 [1986] (Opala, J., dissenting.).

.Corporation Commission Rule 8-27(B) provides:
“Notice of hearing of an application for approval of any schedule, rate, charge, classification, rule or regulation which will directly or indirectly alter charges made for service performed, shall be published once each week for two (2) consecutive weeks at least fifteen (15) days prior to hearing in a newspaper of general circulation published in each county in which are located utility customers affected thereby, unless the Commission directs otherwise.” [Emphasis mine.]

. Pryse Monument Co. v. District Court, Etc., supra note 2 at 438.

. Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee v. McGrath, (Douglas, J., concurring), 341 U.S. 123, 179, 71 S.Ct. 624, 652, 95 L.Ed. 817 [1951].

. Special Indemn. Fund v. Washburn, supra note 2 at 1212. In Washburn the court granted review by certiorari even though petitioner’s rehearing quest had been filed too late to receive consideration before the Court of Appeals. My dissent points out that certiorari is regulated by a rule-governed process and that on review of a rehearing dismissal this court "should not claim for itself unrestrained freedom from any rule-imposed impediment. The process of choosing cases for certiorari review should not become a game of chance in which favor is dispensed only to those who are singled out as worthy of the court’s largesse."

. See United States v. Indrelunas, 411 U.S. 216, 222-223, 93 S.Ct. 1562, 1565, 36 L.Ed.2d 202 [1973] (procedural rules must be applied mechanically to avoid the uncertainties that arise when exceptions are created); Torres v. Oakland Scavenger Co., 487 U.S. 312, 108 S.Ct. 2405, 2407-2409, 101 L.Ed.2d 285 [1988]; Bane v. Anderson, Bryant & Co., Okl., 786 P.2d 1230, 1238, n. 1 [1990] (Opala, V.C.J., concurring in part and dissenting in part).

. In Accardi, supra note 1, the Board of Immigration violated a regulation which prescribed the procedure to be followed in processing an alien’s application for suspension of deportation.

. In United States v. Heffner, 420 F.2d 809, 811 [4th Cir.1969], the court gave Accardi a broader sweep than that which follows directly from its teaching. Heffner applied Accardi to all of the agency’s binding procedural rules, whether legislatively authorized or not.

. The view we adopt today does not meet with unanimous support of national jurisprudence. Well-recognized distinctions are often made between legislative, interpretative and procedural rules. The last two categories of rules are not always given the force of law whose breach will invariably spawn reversal of agency’s action. "A legislative rule is the product of an exercise of legislative power by an administrative agency, pursuant to a grant of legislative power by the legislative body” and is “as binding upon a court as a statute if it is (a) within the granted power, (b) issued pursuant to proper procedure, and (c) reasonable.” K.C. Davis, 1 Administrative Law Treatise § 5.03 at 299 [1958]; see also 1 F.E. Cooper, State Administrative Law 264 [1965]. Procedural rules, when rested on legislatively generated norms, are generally classified as legislative rules. See Davis, supra, § 5.03 at 299. Procedural rules falling into this category have been given binding effect, see, e.g., Accardi, supra note 8, 347 U.S. at 265-267, 74 S.Ct. at 502-503; Service v. Dulles, 354 U.S. 363, 380, 77 S.Ct. 1152, 1161, 1 L.Ed.2d 1403 [1957], but see American Farm Lines v. Black *1271Ball Freight Service, 397 U.S. 532, 539-540, 90 S.Ct. 1288, 1292, 25 L.Ed.2d 547 [1970].
Interpretative rules are those which do not rest upon a legislative grant of law-making power. Davis, supra, §§ 5.03 and 5.11 at 300-306 and 358. The validity of interpretative rules is subject to challenge in any court proceeding in which their application may be in question. "Interpretative rules may interpret (1) a statute, (2) a legislative rule, (3) another interpretative rule, (4) judicial decisions, (5) administrative decisions, (6) administrative rulings, (7) any other law or interpretation, (8) any combination of items on this list, or (9) nothing.” Davis, supra, § 5.03 at 304. The weight to be given interpretative rules varies from case to case. The decision usually rests upon a plurality of factors, of which the content of the rule is but one. See Davis, supra, § 5.03 at 300, where the author enumerates factors which have some bearing upon whether an interpretative rule has the force of law.
Procedural rules that are not adopted pursuant to legislatively prescribed norms fall outside the class of legislative rules. See Cooper, supra at 266. A nonlegislative procedural rule is one that implements a general, rather than a statutory, grant of rule-making authority to an agency. But cf. Davis, supra, § 5.03, in which the text classifies as legislative any procedural rule designed to govern the agency's own proceedings, whether specific power is granted to issue it or not. The weight accorded nonlegislative procedural rules generally depends upon the circumstances of the case. See Cooper, supra at 266-270.
Without distinguishing between legislative and procedural rules, some textwriters have noted various exceptions to the general rule that validly promulgated rules and regulations have the full force and effect of law. See Mezines, Stein, and Gruff, 3 Administrative Law § 13.03[2] [Feb.1990 cum.supp.]. Some courts have not applied this principle to agency violations that ste intended to regulate internal agency procedures rather than to protect any interest of the objecting party. First State Bank of Hudson County v. U.S., 599 F.2d 558 [3rd Cir.1979], cert. denied, 444 U.S. 1013, 100 S.Ct. 662, 62 L.Ed.2d 642 [1980], and cases cited in Mezines, Stein and Gruff, supra at § 13.03[2], n. 5. Courts for the most part have not allowed agencies to violate rules that were promulgated to benefit a party, either by entitling him to a substantive benefit or exemption or to a procedural safeguard. See, e.g., Vitarelli v. Seaton, 359 U.S. 535, 540, 79 S.Ct. 968, 973, 3 L.Ed.2d 1012 [1959]; Flores v. Bowen, 790 F.2d 740, 742 [9th Cir.1986]. The courts have held that an administrative agency may make ad hoc changes that relax or modify its procedural rules as long as that action does not injure or substantially prejudice the complaining party. See United States v. Caceres, 440 U.S. 741, 754-756, 99 S.Ct. 1465, 1472-1473, 59 L.Ed.2d 733 [1979]; American Farm Lines v. Black Ball Freight Service, supra; Mezines, Stein and Gruff, supra at § 13.03[2], n 9.

. Adjective rules "internally” spawned or "institutionally” fashioned by agencies or courts are "self-generated” norms of procedure.

. The terms of Art. 5, § 46, Okl. Const., provide in pertinent part:
"The Legislature shall not ... pass any local or special law authorizing:
****** Regulating the practice ... in judicial proceedings or inquiry before the courts, ... commissioners, arbitrators, or other tribu-nals_”

. See Maule v. Independent School Dist. No. 9, Okl., 714 P.2d 198, 203-204 [1986], citing Ind. School Dist. v. Okl. City Fed. of Tchrs., Okl., 612 P.2d 719, 725-726 [1980] (Opala, J., dissenting); Reynolds v. Porter, Okl., 760 P.2d 816, 821-824 [1988].

. See Howard v. T.G. & Y. Stores, Inc., Okl., 725 P.2d 1262 [1986], in which the trial judge’s order was reversed for failure to comply with the strictures of an applicable procedural rule that dealt with admissibility of an untimely-tendered medical report. As I view Howard, it extends the Accardi doctrine to those judicial proceedings in which a court-fashioned norm of procedure was ignored or disregarded to a litigant’s prejudice.

. While I agree the Commission’s order under review today is correctly reversed for failing to explain want of notice to the public utility’s customers in accordance with the Commission rules, there is precedent for remanding a case to the agency so that it can supply reasons for its refusal to obey the rule's governing force. See, e.g., Securities and Exchange Com. v. Chenery Corp., 318 U.S. 80, 94-95, 63 S.Ct. 454, 462, 87 L.Ed. 626 [1943], agency decision aff'd after remand, 332 U.S. 194, 67 S.Ct. 1575, 91 L.Ed. 1995 [1947]; F.T.C. v. Crowther, 430 F.2d 510, 514-516 [D.C.Cir.1970]; see also Violations By Agencies of Their Own Regulations, 87 Harv. L.Rev. 629 [1974],