Court Opinion

ID: 9448043
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-03 23:21:15.754754+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:31:16.058755
License: Public Domain

JOHN R. BROWN, Circuit Judge
(concurring specially).
I concur in the result and all cf the opinion save one phrase. It is accurate to state that it has been several times said in the cited cases that the primary aim of the Natural Gas Act was to protect the consumer. But the Act does not say so. I still believe that Congress was equally concerned with the rights, the ownership and the imperative requirement for fairness due those who own this valuable natural resource, those whose ingenuity and risktaking captures it for man’s productive use, and those who transport it from the wellhead to the burner tip. Perhaps their interests are assumed in the objective of protecting that of the consumer. If that is so the phrase is meaningless. If it means more, then it sounds its own death knell so long as the Fifth Amendment stands to keep government from taking one’s goods for the benefit of another.