438
Opinion of the Court
simplified its tariff filing rules, as by eliminating the requirement that the actual powers of attorney be filed with the ICC. See 48 Fed. Reg. 31265, 31266 (1983); see also Revision of Tariff Regulations, All Carriers, 1 I. C. C. 2d 404, 408 (1984). The ICC's rule that "participation" is required, however, remained in force. See id., at 434; see also 48 Fed. Reg. 31266 (1983) ("The obligation to limit tariff publication to existing agency relationships remains, however, as a matter of law"). Many shippers and carriers nevertheless responded to the very changes in the market that prompted the ICC's revision of its rules by ignoring the rates the carriers had filed with the ICC and instead negotiating rates for carriage lower than the filed rates. As a further result of competitive pressures, many carriers also went bankrupt. A number of trustees and debtors-in-possession then attempted to recover as undercharges the difference between the negotiated and filed rates. Since the market changes convinced the ICC that strict adherence to the filed rate doctrine was no longer necessary under some circumstances, Maislin, 497 U. S., at 121, the ICC decided to follow a new policy of determining, case by case, whether it would be an "unreasonable practice" under 49 U. S. C. § 10701 for a carrier (often by then bankrupt) to recover for undercharges from a shipper who had paid a negotiated, rather than filed, rate. See National Industrial Transportation League— Petition to Institute Rulemaking on Negotiated Motor Common Carrier Rates, 3 I. C. C. 2d 99, 104-108 (1986); 5 I. C. C. 2d 623, 628-634 (1989). In Maislin, we held that this ICC practice violated the core purposes of the Act, because "[b]y refusing to order collection of the filed rate solely because the parties had agreed to a lower rate, the ICC has permitted the very price discrimination that the Act by its terms seeks to prevent." 497 U. S., at 130 (citing 49 U. S. C. § 10741). Thus, we held that any bankruptcy trustee or debtor-in-possession was entitled to recover for undercharges based on effective, filed rates.
Page: Index Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 NextLast modified: October 4, 2007