Field Container Corp. v. I.C.C., 82-1656

• Decision Date: 28 June 1983
• Docket Number: No. 82-1656,82-1656
• Citation: 712 F.2d 250
• Parties: FIELD CONTAINER CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION and United States of America, Respondents. Chicago and Northwestern Transportation Company, Intervening-Respondent.
• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals — Seventh Circuit

Page 250

712 F.2d 250

FIELD CONTAINER CORPORATION, Petitioner, v. INTERSTATE COMMERCE COMMISSION and United States of America Respondents Chicago and Northwestern Transportation Company Intervening-Respondent.

No. 82-1656.

United States Court of Appeals Seventh Circuit.

Argued April 15, 1983.

Decided June 28, 1983.

Abraham A. Diamond, Chicago, Ill., for petitioner.

Laurence H. Schecker, Interstate Commerce Commission, Washington, D.C., for respondents.

Before PELL and POSNER, Circuit Judges, and BROWN, Senior Circuit judge. ^*

POSNER, Circuit Judge.

Field Container Corporation, a shipper, complained to the Interstate Commerce Commission that the C & NW railroad had unreasonably assessed some $19,000 in demurrage against it. The Commission dismissed the complaint and ordered Field to pay the assessment, and Field has petitioned us to set aside the Commission's decision. "Demurrage" in railroad parlance is the charge for a shipper's holding the railroad's cars for loading or unloading beyond a specified time, thereby depriving the railroad of their use; on the history of railroad demurrage see Chrysler Corp. v. New York Central R.R., 234 I.C.C. 755, 759-61 (1939). Field's petition for review raises interesting questions with respect to the form of demurrage known as the "average agreement," but before we can reach them we must satisfy ourselves that we have jurisdiction.

Section 2321(a) of the Judicial Code gives the courts of appeals jurisdiction, made exclusive by section 2342(5), to review final orders of the ICC, except where Congress has otherwise provided, as it has done in section 1336(a) by giving the district courts jurisdiction to enforce or enjoin "any order of the Interstate Commerce Commission for the payment of money or the collection of fines, penalties, and forfeitures." So if this is a proceeding to enjoin an order to pay money, we have no jurisdiction.

The divided review of ICC orders is a vestige of legal evolution--about as useful, and as mischievous, as the human appendix. It goes back to 1906, when judicial hostility to the Commission, among other factors, led Congress in the Hepburn Act, 34 Stat. 584, to overhaul the procedure for judicial enforcement and review of the Commission's orders. See 1 Sharfman, Interstate Commerce Commission 24-25, 46-48 (1931). Section 5 of the Hepburn Act distinguished between judicial review of ICC orders for the payment of money and judicial review of other ICC orders, and as to the latter created a right of direct appeal to the Supreme Court from the initial review courts, which were the circuit courts (not to be confused with the courts of appeals, then called circuit courts of appeals). 34 Stat. 591-92. Continued dissatisfaction with judicial attitudes toward the Commission led Congress a few years later to shift judicial review of ICC orders other than for the payment of money to a new court, the Commerce Court, a short-lived experiment in specialized federal appellate courts. See Frankfurter & Landis, The Business of the Supreme Court 153-74 (1928). Review of orders for the payment of money remained in the circuit courts. In 1913, amidst a chorus of complaints about the Commerce Court, see 50 Cong.Rec. 4531, 4537, 4540-41 (1913), Congress abolished it and transferred its jurisdiction to three-judge district courts, 38 Stat. 219; see United States v. ICC, 337 U.S. 426, 442, 69 S.Ct. 1410, 1419, 93 L.Ed. 1451 (1949), but without altering the jurisdiction of single-judge district courts--which had succeeded to the jurisdiction of the circuit courts upon their abolition two years before, 36 Stat. 1087--to review orders for the payment of money.

Given the judicial hostility in this period to regulatory agencies such as the ICC, and a bearable caseload in the Supreme Court, the dual system of judicial review made a certain amount of sense. Orders that might have national impact received initial scrutiny by three judges with a right of direct appeal to the Supreme Court. But since invalidating an order limited to the payment of money had little potential to disrupt the regulatory system, such orders were reviewed by a single district judge with a right of appeal only to the court of appeals, though the Supreme Court could of course review on certiorari. However, as the Supreme Court's caseload waxed and judicial hostility to regulatory agencies waned, the extraordinary review procedure for nonpayment orders became an anachronism and it was finally abolished in 1975. 88 Stat. 1917. But instead of making all ICC orders reviewable in the standard modern fashion--that is, in the courts of appeals--Congress, without explanation, gave those courts only the review jurisdiction that the three-judge district courts had had, and left jurisdiction to review orders for the payment of money in the district courts. As a result, the only difference in judicial review of the two types of order is that the less important, the order for the payment of money, gets an extra tier of review--review by a federal district court, in addition to review by the court of appeals, and by the Supreme Court on certiorari.

When an administrative order is based on a record, as ICC orders for the payment of money are, the reviewing court has no factfinding function, so there is no point in enlisting the federal district courts--trial rather than review courts--to provide an initial tier of judicial review. Denberg v. United States Railroad Retirement Bd., 696 F.2d 1193, 1196 (7th Cir.1983). And it is worse than pointless to do so with respect to only some of an agency's orders, so that proper classification becomes a litigable issue, and a party's mistake in classification can result in his losing his right to judicial review. But that is the system we have for ICC orders, and until Congress changes it we must make what sense we can out of it.

Although Field's complaint challenged the reasonableness of a demurrage assessment that it had not yet paid, the C & NW intervened and got the Commission to order Field to pay, and if that order, a payment order, were the only order Field was asking us to set aside, we would have to dismiss its petition for review. In Pullman-Standard v. ICC, 705 F.2d 875, 879-80 (7th Cir.1983), we joined the District of Columbia Circuit in holding that the form of the order determines whether the district court or the court of appeals has jurisdiction to review it. See Consolidated Rail Corp. v. ICC, 685 F.2d 687, 694 (D.C.Cir.1982). Other courts have held that not form but basis and potential impact determine jurisdiction. The Third Circuit held recently that an order denying a shipper's complaint for remission of demurrage was reviewable directly in the court of appeals because the petition involved "a challenge to the legal bases of the Commission's action ...." Empire-Detroit Steel Division of Cyclops Corp. v. ICC, 659 F.2d 396, 397 (3d Cir.1981). But this is one of the decisions that Pullman-Standard rejected, see 705 F.2d at 878, in adopting the formal approach. Although it would be better if the courts of appeals had exclusive review jurisdiction over all ICC orders, Congress has divided jurisdiction between the courts of appeals and the district courts, and the division should be clearly marked. This requires that all orders to pay, the consequential and the inconsequential alike, be reviewable only in the district courts.

But as it is well settled that review of both a money and a nonmoney order must be sought in the court of appeals (Pullman-Standard was such a case), we must consider whether there is anything else that Field is seeking review of besides the order to pay demurrage. Its petition for review just asks us to set aside the Commission's decision, which dismissed Field's complaint. If Field had paid the demurrage and all its complaint asked was that the railroad be ordered to repay it, the Commission's decision would be reviewable in the district court because an order denying reparations, although it is not literally an order for the payment of money, is treated as one for purposes of determining which court has jurisdiction. United States v. ICC, supra, 337 U.S. at 441, 69 S.Ct. at 1418. But Field had not paid the demurrage, and therefore was not asking for its return. Its complaint asked for an order "commanding [C & NW] to cease and desist from the aforesaid violations of said act, ... [and] direct[ing] the waiver [in whole or part] of the sum of demurrage charges demanded of complainant by [C & NW], ... and that such other and further order or orders be made as the Commission may consider proper in the premises."

This language suggests two grounds for treating the Commission's order dismissing the complaint as more than a payment order. First, in asking that the railroad be forbidden to collect the demurrage that it had assessed, Field was asking for an injunction against the railroad, and an injunction is not a payment order. This may seem an unduly technical argument. The nature of the dispute is the same whether the railroad asks for reparations first or the shipper asks the Commission first to decide whether reparations are due. By suing first Field precipitated the railroad's suit to collect demurrage and was therefore in effect bringing a declaratory judgment action, though not called that under the Commission's rules. A declaratory judgment, like an injunction, is equitable; but where the only dispute between two parties is over whether a particular sum of money is due from one to the other, it might seem that the spirit of section 1336(a), if it has a spirit, would require that review jurisdiction be in the district court. Otherwise there would be the same kind of arbitrary distinction between court of appeals and district court jurisdiction that led the Supreme Court in United States v. ICC, supra, to equate denials of reparations with reparation...