Court Opinion

ID: 8878575
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-11-26 19:50:21.438802+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:06:30.508539
License: Public Domain

MOORE, Circuit Judge
(concurring):
I concur but only because few cases suffer and most cases benefit from as thorough a development of the facts as is feasible. I do not join in the speculative and hypothetical economic philosophies of the majority or the assumption that the Board’s quite specific opinion should be read, as they apparently read it, as establishing “a policy of entry to all truckers who want to act as air freight forwarders * * * ”
The only issue presented to the Board for decision was whether the applications of two motor carriers and two subsidiaries of motor carriers for domestic and international air freight forwarding authority should be granted. Hearings were conducted by the Board, the purpose of which was to determine whether traditional restrictions on surface carriers “have become outmoded for motor carriers like the applicants.” The Board found that “the economics of the dynamic air cargo industry have changed drastically since those restrictions were first evolved.” The Board’s decision and order were quite limited. The four applications were granted “for an experimental 5-year period” subject, however, to review “at any time the approvals granted herein or imposing at any time, with or without a hearing, such other conditions as the Board may find just and reasonable.”
Our function on appeal is, or should be, to review the particular decision before us. Conversely, in my opinion, it is not to impose the social and economic views of members of the court upon the Board, the public, the motor carrier and air freight forwarding industries. Nor is it for us to suggest or devise means for protecting the weak from the strong or even to decide whether such protection is in the public interest. Congress created many regulatory agencies for many industries undoubtedly on the theory that their specialized and concentrated experience gained from facing the practical problems of particular industries would equip such agencies with a background best calculated to enable them to regulate and to balance the various aspects relating to the welfare of the industry, the public interest and competition. The Supreme Court has recently (1967) reiter*308ated this function of the administrative agency (with which the majority is in agreement), namely, that in the light of current relevant facts the agency may overturn past rulings and practices because “this kind of flexibility and adaptability to changing needs and patterns of transportation is an essential part of the office of a regulatory agency.” American Trucking v. A. T. & S. F. R. Co., 387 U.S. 397, 416, 87 S.Ct. 1608, 1618, 18 L.Ed.2d 847.
If the “most serious deficiency” in the Board’s decision “lies in the ambiguity whether the Board has established a policy of entry to all truckers who want to act as air freight forwarders or has merely granted the four applications that were before it,” by all means, remand. I, personally, find no such ambiguity. The decision itself shows its limited application. However, the Board should easily be able to resolve any ambiguity as to the scope of its decision. Furthermore, it is in my opinion premature for the majority to concern themselves with what might happen if large numbers of motor carriers enter or seek to enter the field to “take advantage of the Board’s new policy.”
As to the majority’s suggestion that the Board should determine in advance the effect of the general entry into air freight of motor carriers, so many variables and hypothetical situations would have to be the basis for any such speculation that the computer would have to yield to the crystal ball.
I can at least understand the majority’s unwillingness to rule “that even the present record might not be sufficient for the Board to initiate a properly controlled experiment in the authorization of truckers as air freight forwarders.” After all, this is an age of experimentation. It would ill become the judiciary to deprive the Board and the public as well of this modern development. However, the Board can undoubtedly buttress its position with further facts and findings. Therefore, I am willing to join in the remand to give it this opportunity.