Pacific Gas and Electric Company v. Federal Power Commission, General Motors Corporation, Intervenors. Mississippi Power and Light Company v. Federal Power Commission, General Motors Corporation, Intervenors’s Empirical Analysis
506 F.2d 33 · 1974
Citation profile
217 federal appellate · 39 district · 44 state decisions
How this case has been cited
Cited by 418 later decisions (1 by the Supreme Court) — most recently June 2025 · most notably Alabama Power Co. v. Costle (1979), Batterton v. Marshall (1980)
217 federal appellate · 39 district · 44 state decisions — followed in 11 states
Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.
Relationships
Relies on Abbott Laboratories v. Gardner · Securities and Exchange Commission v. Chenery Corporation Same · Permian Basin Area Rate Cases · Toilet Goods Association v. Wga Rdner · Morgan v. United States
Most-quoted passages
The sentences later courts lift from this opinion, ranked by how many decisions quote each — the parts of the opinion doing the work. These counts are smaller than the citation total above because most of the 418 citing decisions cite the case generally; a passage count includes only decisions quoting that exact language verbatim.
“[w]hen the agency applies the policy in a particular situation, it must be prepared to support the policy just as if the policy statement had never been issued.”
94 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“"The Commission issued the policy statement because the curtailment plans being submitted reflected sharp differences in philosophy which necessitated Commission guidance in the curtailment area. In the absence of such a policy statement, the Commission could have proceeded on an ad hoc basis and tentatively approved curtailment plans filed under section 4 of the Act which the Commission found to be just and reasonable. In following such a course the only difference from the present situation would be that the Commission would be acting under a secret policy rather than under the publicized guidelines of Order No. 467. The argument that an agency must follow rulemaking procedures when it elects to formulate policy by a substantive rule has no application in this case. Order No. 467 does not establish a substantive rule. Although the Commission is free to initiate a rulemaking proceeding to establish a binding substantive rule, the Commission apparently intends to establish its curtailment policies by proceeding through individual adjudications. Order No. 467 merely announces the general policy which the Commission hopes to establish in subsequent proceedings."”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority“statements issued by an agency to advise the public prospectively of the manner in which the agency proposes to exercise a discretionary power.”
5 later decisions quote this exact passage · from the majority
How this case has been treated — in progress
Whether each later court followed, distinguished, criticized, or overruled this decision. The treatment classification (task #35) runs highest-cited cases first and lights up here as it reaches this one.