Court Opinion

ID: 9842958
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 02:22:52.994166+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:14:22.315567
License: Public Domain

MARKEY, Chief Judge,
United States Court of Customs and Patent Appeals,* concurring:
Most respectfully, I can concur only in the result.
If the merits of the FMC order were reachable, I would concur with the conclusion that it is supported by substantial evidence and would fully join the per curiam’s admirably succinct explication of the reasons for that conclusion.
I cannot, however, agree that the Department of Justice (DOJ) has standing to appeal FMC orders approving international conference agreements under § 15 of the Shipping Act, 46 U.S.C. § 814 (1976).1 Nor can I agree that DOJ has met the constitutionally required burden of presenting a true case or controversy.

Standing

Concerning the authority and thus the standing of DOJ to bring this appeal, the present opinion of the majority relies upon that of another panel in United States v. FMC, No. 79-1299 (D.C.Cir. December 19, 1980). That panel correctly recognized that the jurisdictional question was there one of “first impression”, but in my view its answer to that question results in an unwarranted extension of the concept of standing.
Relying solely on its “responsibility to enforce the antitrust laws”, DOJ asserts that it is a “party aggrieved” by the FMC’s final order within the meaning of 28 U.S.C. § 2344 (1976).2 Standing is not achieved, however, by rhetoric about responsibility.
*255Congress necessarily intended in the Shipping Act3 that DOJ stay its hand when FMC has approved a conference agreement. Hence, if DOJ has been “aggrieved”, it has been aggrieved by Congress, not by FMC.
Focusing on the Hobbs Act,4 the earlier panel and the majority here find no direct prohibition in that Act against DOJ’s assuming the role of a supervisor of FMC and a petitioner for review of its § 15 orders. However that may be,5 I respectfully submit that attention has centered on the wrong Act, and that Congress effectively denied DOJ that role in the Shipping Act.
In Federal Maritime Board v. Isbrandtsen Co., 356 U.S. 481, 78 S.Ct. 851, 2 L.Ed.2d 926 (1958), the Isbrandtsen Co. petitioned this court to review, under 5 U.S.C. § 1034 (1952),6 an order of the Federal Maritime Board (FMB) approving a rate system proposed by the Japan-Atlantic and Gulf Freight Conference (the Conference). The FMB was named a respondent. The United States, named as statutory respondent, appeared by DOJ and joined Isbrandtsen in attacking the FMB order.
Under the proposed system in Isbrandt-sen, a shipper would pay less than normal freight rates in exchange for signing án exclusive-patronage contract with the Conference. Contract rates would be set below noncontract rates.7 This court set aside the FMB order, holding the system of dual rates illegal per se under the Shipping Act, 1916. The Supreme Court affirmed.
Following Isbrandtsen, Congress commenced a full-scale study of steamship conferences and relations with shippers, with a view toward amending the Shipping Act, 1916. The primary purpose of the resulting legislation was to authorize ocean common carriers, and conferences thereof serving the foreign commerce of the United States, to enter into effective and fair dual rate contracts with shippers. H.R.Rep.No.498, *25687th Cong., 1st Sess. 1-3 (1916); S.Rep.No. 860, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 1 (1961), U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1961, 3108.
In Isbrandtsen and the subsequent Congressional hearings, DOJ took a traditional antitrust approach and attacked the dual rate system. Congress, however, repudiated that narrow perspective and relied upon the FMC for a balanced approach to regulation in the industry.
That Congress never intended FMC § 15 orders to be challengeable by DOJ is illustrated in the legislative history of § 15, H.R.Rep.No.498, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 12-13 (1961); S.Rep.No.860, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1961),° U.S.Code Cong. & Admin.News 1961, 3109:
The Department of Justice testimony on the legislation was generally unfavorable. While its position is consistent with the antitrust policy of the United States, it fails to take into account the peculiar nature of the particular business involved. The ocean steamship industry is unique among transportation services in a number of respects.
* * * * * *
The committee believes that the present bill represents a minimum but necessary deviation from the concepts of the antitrust law.
* * * * * *
Throughout the course of the hearings, the committee has been confronted with the problem of endeavoring to reconcile the conflict between our traditional antitrust concepts and the needs of our foreign waterborne commerce. Witnesses before the committee have been practically unanimous in their support of the conference system ....
The hearings of the committee have made it quite clear that our traditional antitrust concepts cannot be fully applied to this aspect of international commerce. Your committee has concluded that any attempt to effect regulation of this commerce in a measure comparable to that applied to our domestic commerce would be highly detrimental to our essential American-flag merchant marine. Accordingly, the committee has decided that it should encourage the continued maintenance of effective conferences and that, within safeguards, it should authorize and direct the [FMC] to approve exclusive patronage arrangements without which conferences might well become ineffective.
DOJ should not be permitted here to accomplish through the courts that which it was denied by the Congress.8 '
Congress specifically recognized that American shipping would be injured if conference agreements violative of our antitrust laws could not be entered and carried out. H.R.Rep.No.498, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 13 (1961); S.Rep.No.860, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 2 (1961). It recognized that American interests would be disserved if foreign ship operators were confronted by what they would view as an ogre, that is, by DOJ and its zeal for enforcement of our antitrust laws. It therefore provided a mechanism, in the form of FMC approval of conference agreements, by which foreign ship operators, having escaped the jaundiced eye of DOJ by entering the agreements, would refrain from rate wars injurious to American shipping. Fully aware of DOJ’s views, and in specific recognition that every § 15 approval would violate our antitrust laws, Congress authorized the FMC to grant approvals under appropriate circumstances. Considering this background, I cannot agree with the earlier panel and with the majority here that Congress intended DOJ to inject itself into the sensitive area of international shipping relations and to exercise a supervisory role over the FMC § 15 approval mechanism. Congress intended that FMC, not DOJ, guard the public inter*257est in this one limited area of international trade relations.
Congress created the FMC to provide a forum for the solution of technical and complex matters involved in the shipping industry, Port of New York Authority v. FMC, 429 F.2d 663, 666 (5th Cir. 1970), cert. denied 401 U.S. 909, 91 S.Ct. 867, 27 L.Ed.2d 806 (1971). FMC, as the “public arbiter of competition” in the industry, must consider the antitrust implications of a § 15 agreement before approving it,9 FMC v. Pacific Maritime Assn., 435 U.S. 40, 53, 98 S.Ct. 927, 935, 55 L.Ed.2d 96 (1978); FMC v. Seatrain Lines, Inc., 411 U.S. 726, 739, 93 S.Ct. 1773, 1781, 36 L.Ed.2d 620 (1973), thereby discharging its statutory duty to guard the public interest. Marine Space Enclosures, Inc. v. FMC, 420 F.2d 577, 585 (D.C.Cir.1969). After an agreement has been approved, the agreement and acts done pursuant thereto are exempt from provisions of the antitrust laws. 46 U.S.C. § 814 (1976). H.R.Rep.No.498, 87th Cong., 1st Sess. 5 (1961). Congress thus recognized that the public interest encompassed, in those instances, a continuation of American shipping unlikely or impossible under other circumstances.
It is incongruous and inappropriate for DOJ to predicate a claim to standing solely on its independently developed policy interests in the precise field of regulation delegated by Congress to the FMC. That FMC and DOJ would thus wind up working at cross-purposes was not, in my view, contemplated by Congress. Rather, having conferred specific authority upon the FMC in the Shipping Act, Congress could have had no anathematic intent that DOJ should review all FMC § 15 approvals and decide which ones it will appeal, or that FMC and DOJ be pitted against each other in policy disputes before the courts. It is a fundamental principle of statutory interpretation that Congress will not be presumed to have intended an anomalous result. Bulova Watch Co. v. United States, 365 U.S. 753, 757, 81 S.Ct. 864, 867, 6 L.Ed.2d 72 (1961); United States v. New York & Cuba Mail Steamship Co., 269 U.S. 304, 310, 46 S.Ct. 114, 115, 70 L.Ed. 281 (1925).

Case or Controversy

If DOJ has here presented the case or controversy required by Art. Ill, § 2 of the Constitution, it escapes detection. Careful review and study establishes the presence of interagency disagreement, but fails to unearth a constitutionally required case or controversy.
The issue on the merits is couched in terms of whether the FMC order is supported by substantial evidence. If brought by a private carrier having a pecuniary or proprietary interest in the outcome, there would be no question of standing or “case or controversy”. That would be “the kind of controversy courts traditionally resolve”. United States v. Nixon, 418 U.S. 683, 696, 94 S.Ct. 3090, 3101, 41 L.Ed.2d 1039 (1974).10 See Federal Maritime Board v. Isbrandtsen Co., 356 U.S. 481, 78 S.Ct. 851, 2 L.Ed.2d 926 (1958). The true issue presented however, is whether the DOJ view of antitrust law and the public interest, or that of FMC, shall be applied to the conference agreement involved.
Recognizing the absence of a private carrier claiming injury, and nowhere pointing to any specific party injured in any particu*258lar manner, DOJ attempts to wrap itself in a private party mantle, urging that it acts “on behalf of all citizens” and “on behalf of the aggrieved interests of all of the citizenry.” It does indeed so act, and absent § 15 of the Shipping Act, it would be free to attack the American carriers party to the FMC-approved agreement in this case. The difficulty is that those American carriers are also “citizens”, that “all citizens” have an interest in the preservation of American shipping, and that Congress has directed the FMC to include all those interests when it balances the public interest.
Permitting DOJ to appeal those § 15 approvals which it considers unsupported by substantial evidence merely brings to the courts interagency disputes arising from different views of antitrust law and the public interest. That, however, is a matter of policy and the approach of each agency to its duties and functions.
As stated in Flast v. Cohen, 392 U.S. 83, 94-95, 88 S.Ct. 1942, 1949, 20 L.Ed.2d 947 (1968):
Embodied in the words “cases” and “controversies” are two complementary but somewhat different limitations. In part those words limit the business of federal courts to questions presented in an adversary context and in a form historically viewed as capable of resolution through the judicial process. And in part those words define the role assigned to the judiciary in a tripartite allocation of power to assure that the federal courts will not intrude into areas committed to the other branches of government. Justicia-bility is the term of art employed to give expression to this dual limitation placed upon federal courts by the case-and-controversy doctrine.
Justiciability goes beyond mere disagreement. Because the United States is suing itself,11 and considering the nature of the disagreement, this case is not a true case or controversy. Rather, it is a policy disagreement between the FMC and DOJ, each acting “on behalf of all citizens” and each asking the court to approve its view concerning the weight to be given antitrust implications of a particular § 15 agreement.
Unlike United States v. ICC, 337 U.S. 426, 69 S.Ct. 1410, 93 L.Ed. 1451 (1949), where the United States sought judicial review of ICC action, to protect the proprietary interest of the United States as a shipper, DOJ cannot and does not allege any proprietary interest here. Again unlike ICC, where DOJ espoused the property interest of a third agency-proprietor (Army), it here presents only its own antitrust policy views. The U. S. v. U. S. “anomaly” referred to in ICC as merely on the “surface”, 337 U.S. at 432, 69 S.Ct. at 1414, permeates the entirety of the present case. The proprietary interest exception to the anomaly should not be extended to cases involving no proprietary interest of the United States. Art. Ill, § 2 of the Constitution does not, in my view, permit injection of the courts into a mere policy dispute between agencies of the Executive branch like the one before us.
Accordingly, because DOJ lacks authority productive of standing, and because it has failed to present a true case or controversy, I would have dismissed the appeal.

 Sitting by designation pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 293(a).

. The concern here is with standing, not wisdom. It is not with the incongruities possible when federal agencies bring their internecine policy disputes to court; or with the tragicomic spectacle presented to international shippers who must wait while the U.S. government sues itself; or with the potential burden on the judicial process when DOJ can drag into court every agency order it doesn’t like; or with the policy implications when DOJ functions as a supernumerary nanny over the agency charged with overseeing international agreements. That a myopic zeal for enforcement of antitrust laws may produce strange results, particularly in areas of foreign trade, has been remarked, however, in the public press. The Washington Post, May 25, 1980, at B-6.

. As recognized in the earlier panel opinion (n. 25), DOJ’s participation in the FMC proceeding and its displeasure with the outcome did not alone render it “a party aggrieved” such as to insure a right to judicial review. Indeed, DOJ’s insistence on its right to challenge FMC approvals of conference agreements under § 15, *255founded entirely on its “responsibility to enforce the antitrust laws”, bears no relation to whether it participated below. Its “responsibility” for enforcement would be no less if its manner of performing that responsibility involved a failure to participate before the agency.
Similarly, DOJ offers no basis for singling out its responsibility for enforcement of the antitrust laws from its responsibilities for enforcement of other laws, and no explanation of why its theory here would not equally justify its appeal of every agency decision the effect of which on any of its responsibilities it disliked. Injection of DOJ into other agency operations may or may not be appropriate. It is singularly inappropriate to inject DOJ into our country’s international shipping relationships.

. 46 U.S.C. § 801 et seq. (1976),

. 28 U.S.C. § 2341 et seq. (1976).
Whether DOJ may appeal an agency decision affecting the government’s proprietary interests, whether it may participate in an appeal to defend an agency decision, and whether it may support a private appellant, are questions simply inapplicable here. The sole basis cited for DOJ’s standing to appeal is its “responsibility to enforce the antitrust laws”. That DOJ may be denied an appeal in connection with that responsibility is not fatal. The Double Jeopardy Clause of the Constitution precludes an appeal, for example, of an acquittal in a criminal enforcement of the antitrust laws.

. As the majority appreciates, the Hobbs Act states that “[t]he Attorney General is responsible for and has control of the interests of the Government in all court proceedings under this chapter.” 28 U.S.C. § 2348 (1976). Considering that language alone, a holding that DOJ has standing here produces an obvious dilemma, in which the Attorney General must simultaneously represent the interests of the government (petitioner DOJ) and the interests of the government (respondent FMC) in the same suit. Unless it be said that FMC’s § 15 agreement approvals serve no governmental interests, DOJ’s assertion of standing here reduces to the absurd.
That the Hobbs Act preserves the right of an agency to participate in all cases, including those in which the Attorney General considers the agency in error, contemplates the presence of an interested private party. It is not, in my view, an authorization for the Attorney General to sue the agency, absent the proprietary interest exception found in United States v. ICC, 337 U.S. 426, 69 S.Ct. 1410, 93 L.Ed. 1451 (1949), discussed infra.

. Now 28 U.S.C. § 2344 (1976).

. Dual rate or exclusive patronage systems have an anticompetitive effect because the cargo of contract shippers becomes unavailable to nonconference carriers. When shippers sign dual rate contracts, nonconference carriers (like Isbrandtsen) have less cargo and may be forced to withdraw from competition.

. Congress was dealing with international shipping relations. In granting FMC the authority to approve shipping agreements violative of the antitrust laws, it need not have added an explicit statement that DOJ’s responsibility to enforce those laws, whether directly or by appeal, was thereby rendered inapplicable to those agreements. There must be room for congressional common sense.

. Nowhere in the Shipping Act did Congress refer FMC to DOJ for consideration of antitrust implications in FMC orders. On the contrary, it relied entirely on the expertise of the FMC for approval or disapproval of anti-competitive agreements in the international shipping trade. Having determined that the public interest includes maintenance of an American shipping capacity, Congress gave an agency steeped in the history and nuances of ocean shipping the extraordinary authority to approve conduct otherwise violative of our antitrust laws. DOJ’s effort here is a back-door attempt to undo what Congress did.

. United States v. Nixon was a special case, involving a Special Prosecutor and a subpoena for evidence in a criminal proceeding. In providing for a Special Prosecutor, Congress clearly contemplated not only the possibility but the certainty that he would be pitted against elements of the Executive branch and may have “to use judicial processes to pursue evidence”, 418 U.S. at 695 n. 9, 94 S.Ct. at 3101.

. Though the case is captioned United States of America v. FMC, the true statutory respondent is the United States, not the FMC. 28 U.S.C. § 2344 (1976).