Court Opinion

ID: 9455041
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-04 19:07:16.472863+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:34:25.571343
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur fully in the Court’s decision and the formidable opinion voiced for us by Judge Goldberg. My reservations are not that we hold too much or say too much. My doubts are that on the structure erected we do too little, we say too little. My difference is confined to Part IV and then only in a limited way. I agree fully that the burden is heavy— indeed impossible from a practical standpoint — of showing a change of conditions to flee before the inexorable restraint of collateral estoppel.8
But to that impossible burden I would add an absolute obstacle. The District Court is not the place to thresh this issue out. If there has been a demonstrable change of conditions, then that change must be proved before and determined by the ICC.
The statute is imperative, the prohibition peremptory. “No carrier by railroad subject to this chapter,” says § 1 (18), “shall undertake * * * construction of a new line * * * unless and until there shall first have been obtained from the [ICC] a certificate * * * [of] * * * public convenience and necessity * * (See note 2 of the Court’s opinion). (Emphasis added). To do so invokes not only the imminence of a § 1(20) injunction at the hands of the Government or, we now correctly hold, a private competitor, whose selfish interests take on the appealing color of public concern. It invokes serious criminal and civil sanctions as well. (See, e. g., § 1(20), note 1 of the Court’s opinion.)
The whole idea behind the structure of the Act is to commit carrier-railroad problems to a body having an expertness in the business of railroading. Now events have long since loosened the laissez faire bonds imposed by a hostile Judiciary.9 Behind § 1(18) is a congressional determination born of scandals that rocked the nation in high and low places growing out of the promotion of railroads, the saddling of the invest*403ing and shipping public with heavy burdens occasioned by uneconomic expansion of facilities.
The guardian — certainly at least since the Urgent Deficiencies Act10 for 3-Judge review of ICC orders — has been the ICC. It is incongruous to think that Congress would commit to Federal Judges — whose lifetime tenure assures independence, but whose Commission invests them with not one ounce more prescience then held before — this delicate decision on what is needed for a National transportation system.11
Here the problem appears to be the relatively innocuous one of a 30-mile addition. But if it can be done here, there is no reason why a Federal Judge — • whose fact decisions will then bear the buckler and shield of F.R.Civ.P. 52(a) —cannot do the same thing on a major addition within a given state to serve some new industrial traffic.12
The prohibition in § 1(18) is flat and, more importantly, in terms of the status of the constructing carrier. Unlike spurs and switching connections (see note 3 of the Court’s opinion), § 1(18) does not confine the requirement for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to those extensions or facilities which will be in or a part of interstate commerce. The prohibition is against the construction of any extension of its line or construction of a new line by a “carrier subject to this chapter.” It is not specifically tied to the intra or interstate nature of such line.
None of these considerations is minimized by some of the older Supreme Court cases. These were the product of the “era of negativity” (Part III of the Court’s opinion) — a name given to the ruling about negative orders, but which more accurately describes the attitude of Judicial hostility. When that spurious dialectic was rejected, all fell before it. No longer would the promoter have his nice choice: go before the ICC and if it declined to grant permission, then proceed with construction, defending a § 1 (20) injunction on the grounds of no interstate commerce. Now all is to be channeled into and through the ICC just as § 1(18) says, with the relief by. Judges to come only in a 3-Judge case on the limited review afforded. And in any event, if — and the if is a very, very big one — anything is left to initial judicial determination by the District Court, the case calls imperatively for the full exercise of primary jurisdiction to send the “change of condition” problem and the renewed question of intra or inter-state character of the line to the ICC for initial hearing and determination. We did just that concerning a serious question of motor carrier exemption un*404der the Interstate Commerce Act. Agricultural Transportation Ass’n of Texas v. King, 5 Cir., 1965, 349 F.2d 873.13
Railroading is big business. It is big business with big problems, big debts, big competition and big inroads on its revenues. It involves matters of great public importance. It needs the interested concern of knowledgeable people having a judgment born of long experience and beyond that obtainable as a single shot proposition by a Judge on a case-and-controversy record in a private suit between intense competitors.14
It is big business. But it is not our business. It is the business of the ICC and Judge business thereafter only in the narrowest sense of whether the ICC order is “in accordance with law”, 5 U.S.C.A. § 706.
The return to the Trial Court will be a water haul for Tampa.

. My full concurrence is not diminished by this comment. But I think the opinion unnecessarily overworks collateral estoppel. To me the Interstate Commerce Act and the rich history emerging from the niggardly resistance of the Judiciary toward it down to contemporary recognition of the need for the fullest exercise of its statutory powers, would now recognize that on simple principles of administrative law, the 3-Judge Court is the sole —the word is sole — means of review.

. See C. Swisher, American Constitutional Development 813-845 (2d ed. 1954).

. Act of Oct. 22, 1913, Ch. 32, 38 Stat. 208, 220. Now see 28 U.S.C.A. § 2325.

. The Interstate Commerce Act declares this to be the policy:
It is hereby declared to be the national . transportation policy of the Congress to provide for fair and impartial regulation of all modes of transportation subject to the provisions of this act so administered as to recognize and preserve the inherent advantages of each; to promote safe, adequate, economical, and efficient service and foster sound economic conditions in transportation and among the several carriers; to encourage the establishment and maintenance of reasonable charges for transportation services, without unjust discriminations, undue preferences or advantages, or unfair or destructive competitive practices; to cooperate with the several States and the duly authorized officials thereof; and to encourage fair wages and equitable working conditions — all to the end of developing, coordinating and preserving a national transportation system by water, highway, and rail, as well as other means, adequate to meet the needs of the commerce of the United States, of the Postal Service, and of the national defense. All of the provisions of this act shall be administered and enforced with view to carrying out the above declaration of policy.
49 U.S.C.A. preceding §§ 1, 301, 901 and 1001.

. Appeal to the Court of Appeals is hardly much assurance for the fulfillment of a national transportation policy. What wisdom do we draw on?

. Probably our most spectacular application of primary jurisdiction was in private suits over the amount of gas royalties due the landowner-lessor by a producer-lessee subject to the Natural Gas Act, 15 U.S.C.A. § 717 et seq. Regulation by the Federal Power Commission depended on the jurisdictional issue' of whether gas royalties were “sales of gas for resale in interstate commerce.” Reversing two judgments after jury trials, we remanded with directions to the District Court to direct the parties to seek declaratory orders from FPC. Weymouth v. Colorado Interstate Gas Co., 5 Cir., 1966, 367 F.2d 84; J. M. Huber Corp. v. Denman, 5 Cir., 1966, 367 F.2d 104. Since then, the FPC has held that these royalties are sales subjecting the amounts payable to appropriate FPC ceilings. The extraordinary nature of a reference to the FPC to determine its own jurisdiction is pointed up by the penetrating partial dissent of Commissioner Carver. Denman v. J. M. Huber Corp., Opinion No. 562, Docket Nos. RI67-113, -114, -310, -400 (July 23, 1969).
Even more recently we affirmed a District Court which stayed a private antitrust suit pending determination by the Federal Communications Commission of the validity of a tariff provision prohibiting “foreign connections” on telephone company equipment. Carter v. American Tel. & Tel. Co., 5 Cir., 1966, 365 F.2d 486, cert, denied, 1967, 385 U.S. 1008, 87 S.Ct. 714, 17 L.Ed.2d 546. This case is powerful refutation to those purists who look on abstention as some major evil, W. S. Ranch Co. v. Kaiser Steel Corp., 10 Cir., 1967, 388 F.2d 257, 264-65 (dissenting opinion), rev’d, 1968, 391 U.S. 593, 88 S.Ct. 1753, 20 L.Ed.2d 835.
The antitrust plaintiffs, resisting primary jurisdiction reference to the bitter certiorari end, soon found a welcome forum and shortly were the beneficiaries of sweeping orders by FCC which shortly precipitated a healthy settlement.
Primary jurisdiction does not oust the Court of its jurisdiction or ultimate duty to decide. It just postpones decision. See Southwestern Sugar and Molasses Co. v. River Terminals Corp., 1959, 360 U.S. 411, 420, 79 S.Ct. 1210, 1216, 3 L.Ed.2d 1334, 1342, 1959 AMC 1631, 1638-39. In view of this I do not regard our instant decision and opinion to foreclose use of a primary jurisdiction reference by the District Judge on remand. As in Garter, supra, this just might turn out to be a boon to Tampa since it would afford opportunity for an evidentiary reexamination in depth on the question of the interstate character of the line. This is especially so since the ICC liberally allows subsequent petitions for reconsideration quite apart from primary jurisdiction reference.

. Our own experience in this case bears this out. The oral argument revealed that the Court was helpless in umpiring this dispute which had obvious overtones of great public importance, which with the luxury the case-and-controversy system permits, were completely ignored as each contestant in the liberties the system allows, if not encourages, jousted in its own self interest. One side held tenaciously to the “era of negativity” of Piedmont, supra, the other had paid scant attention to its subsequent history. It became evident that the Government had a stake and the Court on its own motion by a detailed letter directive called for extensive briefs from the Attorney General. Then the public interest doors began to open.