Algignis, Inc. v. Federal Energy Regulatory Commission

Algignis projects from being subject to civil penalties, criminal sanctions, and stop orders. Without understanding or even having full read the applications, FERC immediately stonewalled Algignis, and dismissed the applications claiming that FERC had no jurisdiction to issue them under the FPA. Algignis appealed the FERC dismissal to the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia (CADC). A panel of the CADC sua sponte dismissed the Algignis appeal for want of standing. We mean no disrespect, but we are going to examine the realities, uses, and abuses of the standing doctrine to show why this happened. First, some background. Two points: 1) Flumans are highly social animals, and much of what we "know" is grounded on social validation—not actual knowledge; and 2) As a class, lawyers are bad at math and science. For instance, everyone "knows" the earth revolves around the sun, but when pressed to explain how they know that, almost no-one can. There was a time when everyone "knew" that the sun revolved around the earth. A perceptive National Review article about the Wright brother made the following points: 1) In 1903, the Wright brothers were not on the short list of those thought capable of achieving powered human flight; 2) Everyone (including the U.S. government) bet on the aviation "expert", Samuel Langley, because he was socially validated as a "big" name; 3) Radical innovation comes from the unlikeliest places because unknowns are not shackled by convention; and 4) Socially validated corporate and governmental innovations are incremental at best and wrong at worst because people with power and social validation don't want to risk appearing foolish. If our company had been named "Chevron" or represented by a top law firm, the very same FPA preliminary permit applications would not have been rejected out-of-hand by FERC not dismissed sua sponte for lack of standing by the CADC. When we, unknowns without social validation, showed up on the doorsteps of FERC and the CADC, respectively, consciously or subconsciously, they both essentially said, "Who do these people thing they are? We are too busy and too important to be bothered with these wild claims that we lack the scientific knowledge to independently evaluate. If you, Algignis, don't provide us with the safety and comfort of social validation, you are outta here!" Then they (FERC and the CADC) used the artifices of "jurisdiction" and "standing" to do exactly that. Understandable from a social perspective, but legally wrong. The title and subtitle of a Wall Street Journal article written to mark the 50th anniversary of Man's first walk on the Moon said it all: The Moonshot Mindset Once Came from the Government. No longer. Americans still take big risks to solve big problems. But now it's private enterprise that does it. That is exactly what the Algignis team is doing: Taking big risks to solve the big environmental problems of 1) toxic algae blooms; 2) petroleumbased plastics pollution; and 3) premature retirement of our low-carbon nuclear power