Court Opinion

ID: 9308592
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:20:24.09644+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:14:02.339682
License: Public Domain

LARSON, District Judge,
concurring.
I respectfully join in the decision insofar as it holds that final judgment for the *1088defendant and against the plaintiffs should have been entered once the District Court determined that the allowances were competitive in nature and therefore properly withdrawn by the defendant. My review of the record indicates that the claim that the Mobil N dealers and the Mobil OG&L dealers constituted separate classes of purchaser was not properly before the District Court. Our opinion need go no further. The discussion of the majority regarding FEA Ruling 1975-2 is, however, unnecessary to the resolution of this case.
Furthermore, it is my opinion that this Court’s decisions in Shell Oil Co. v. Federal Energy Administration, 527 F.2d 1243 (TECA 1975), and Atlantic Richfield Co. v. Zarb, 532 F.2d 1363 (TECA 1976), would not have foreclosed the result reached by the District Court herein had the claim been properly before the court. Ruling 1975-2 does not represent an attempt to control rents, but rather represents an attempt to define who constitute the appropriate classes of purchaser under the energy regulations. This Court in the Shell Oil case recognized that some consideration of the status of the dealer vis-a-vis the supplier-manufacturer of the gasoline would be necessary in some circumstances:
“The FEA contends that these [rent] regulations prevent the frustration of its petroleum price regulations. But, while the rent charged by the lessor for real property used in retailing gasoline will affect the total cost of the retailer-lessee’s operation, it is only when the lessor of the real property and the supplier of the gasoline to be marketed at that site are one and the same that any increase in rent could possibly be construed as a hidden increase in the price of gasoline. The rent regulations promulgated by the FEA are not limited to this situation.” 527 F.2d at 1246.
By implication, therefore, when the lessor of property is also the gasoline supplier for a lessee-dealer, that relationship can have an impact on the pricing of the gasoline. Ruling 1975-2 recognizes as much. It does not allow the FEA (now the DOE) to regulate the rent charged but it does require in some circumstances that those dealers who rent from the supplier be treated as a separate class of purchaser.
A principal function of the class of purchaser concept is to preserve the price distinctions among purchasers that customarily existed under free market conditions. By construing practical distinctions based upon the relationship between the dealer and the supplier of gasoline to fall within the proscription on regulating rents, this Court will further hamper the DOE in its efforts to carry out the mandate of Congress to effectively regulate gasoline prices in the United States.