Court Opinion

ID: 9419110
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 22:46:09.114326+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:22:15.290906
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Roberts,
dissenting:'
The petitioners’ proration order is challenged not merely as unfair or unreasonable but as confiscatory of the respondent’s property. Upon the allegations of the bill, the District Court had jurisdiction. Although the problem of proration presented technical and difficult questions, and although the Commission was vested with a broad discretion in dealing with them, these facts could not justify the court’s abdicating its jurisdiction to test the Commission’s order. The case was tried de novo and neither the full record made before the Commission nor its findings appear in the evidence, except for what is contained in the Commission’s orders. After a painstaking trial, and upon detailed and well supported findings of fact, the court reached the conclusion that the order worked a confiscation of respondent’s property.1 The court said: “The respondents’ [petitioners’] engineers frankly admitted that the present scheme of proration is nothing more or less than one on a per well basis.” Referring to such a basis, the court added: “It is sufficient to say that it takes no account of the difference in the wells, of the richness or thickness of the sand, of the *585location upon the structure, of the porosity or permeability of the sand, of the estimated oil reserves, or of the acreage upon which the respective wells are situated. The worst property is raised to the level of the best and the best is lowered to the level of the worst.” The court concluded that the order operated to appropriate, for the benefit of others, the respondent’s oil without compensation.
The Circuit Court of Appeals approved and adopted the findings and conclusions of the District Court.2
The opinion of this court, in my judgment, announces principles with respect to the review of administrative action challenged under the due process clause directly contrary to those which have been established. A recent exposition of the applicable principles is found in the opinion of Mr. Justice Brandéis, written for a unanimous court, in Thompson v. Consolidated Gas Utilities Corp., 300 U. S. 55, dealing with a proration order affecting gas, entered by the same commission which entered the order here in issue. I think that adherence to the principles there stated requires the affirmance of the decree.
The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice McReynolds join in this opinion.

 28 F. Supp. 131.

 107 F. 2d 70.