Court Opinion

ID: 9581007
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 22:10:59.424001+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:36:39.184192
License: Public Domain

*472DISSENTING OPINION BY
LEVINSON, J.
The Public Utilities Commission (PUC) was expressly constrained from granting the applicant’s request for an expanded certificate of public convenience and necessity unless it found “that the applicant is fit, willing, and able properly to perform the service proposed. ” HRS § 271-12. In this connection, the PUC considered the applicant’s financial fitness to perform the proposed service an essential criterion of section 271-12. The majority opinion expresses, facially at least, agreement with this construction of the statute, and concludes that the record in this case contains “substantial evidence” to support the PUC’s finding that the applicant is financially fit. Yet the evidence upon which the PUC relied and which the majority now characterizes as “substantial” lacks the most rudimentary indicia of the applicant’s economic capacity to perform the operation for which it sought authority. I can only conclude that the majority has, through misuse of the already elastic concept of substantial evidence, abrogated the statutory requirement of financial fitness in this case to reach a result which it believes appropriate notwithstanding the state of the record.
The applicant’s own accountant testified that its existing working capital was inadequate to purchase the equipment necessary to the proposed service. Accordingly, the applicant sought to show financial fitness in this respect by proof that outside sources of financing were available to it. It adduced the following evidence to underpin its theory of financial responsibility: (1) Charley’s Taxi, an independent enterprise also owned by the applicant’s sole stockholder, had advanced loans to the applicant in the past, (2) financial institutions whose names it refused to reveal were prepared to finance the acquisition of the new equipment, and (3) in the event all else failed, its sole stockholder would advance needed funds out of her personal resources. The record is barren of any other evidence that the applicant is financially capable of fulfilling the expectations underlying its applica*473tion for an expanded certificate.
In my opinion, this court should defer to the judgment of the PUC only when each and every statutory requirement for a certificate of public convenience has been met by some evidence on the record. The substantial evidence test, when properly applied, affords the maximum possible judicial deference to the special expertise of an administrative agency consistent with the public interest in securing adherence by that agency to statutory mandates. However, under that test a court should not affirm an agency adjudication when the record reveals a total void of evidence on a key statutory point, even though evidence on other points abounds. See, e.g., United States v. Pierce Auto Freight Lines, Inc., 327 U.S. 515, 533 (1946) (finding by Interstate Commerce Commission that applicant for license is financially fit must have some factual foundation on the record); ICC v. Parker, 326 U.S. 60, 64, reh. denied, 326 U.S. 803 (1945) (finding by Interstate Commerce Commission that public convenience and necessity requires granting a license “must have had the necessary factual findings to support it”).
I find the record in this case plainly wanting of evidence that the applicant can obtain the financing necessary to the proposed service, and hence that it is “fit. . . and able” to perform that service, as required by HRS § 271-12. While Charley’s Taxi has advanced money to the applicant in the past, there is no indication that it will do so or that it is even considering doing so in the future. Moreover, the applicant refused to disclose the credit worthiness or even the identities of those “financial institutions” which it asserted were prepared to finance the acquisition of needed equipment. The majority states that it does not “condone the Commission’s practice of refusing to compel an applicant to disclose the identity of or discuss the credit worthiness of his financial sources. ” However, it is beyond my comprehension how the majority can conclude that the PUC’s “failure to do so [did not constitute] prejudicial error,” when, on the state of the record in this case, the applicant’s undisclosed sources could just as easily be impecunious or undesirable as acceptable. Finally, it would seem elementary that the willingness of the *474applicant’s sole stockholder to put her personal resources at the applicant’s disposal cannot prove the applicant’s financial fitness absent some evidence, lacking in this record, that the stockholder herself is sufficiently “financially fit” to implement her willingness.
If the record in this case demonstrated merely a paucity of evidence on the applicant’s financial fitness, I might be persuaded to subscribe to the majority position. Because the record shows a vacuum on this key point, however, I cannot agree with the majority’s misplaced reliance on the substantial evidence test to fill it. I therefore dissent.