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Robert A. Jablon Spiegel & McDiarmid LLP Direct: 202.879.4070 |
EDUCATION: |
Harvard Law School, LLB, 1964 Lehigh University, BS, with honors, 1961 |
BAR ADMISSIONS: |
New York State District of Columbia Supreme Court of the United States United States Courts of Appeals for the District of Columbia; First, Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth, Sixth, Ninth, Eleventh, and Federal Circuits United States Court of Federal Claims |
LEGAL EXPERIENCE: |
Since joining Spiegel & McDiarmid in December 1972, Mr. Jablon has participated in numerous district court, appellate, and administrative cases, as well as negotiated case settlements and contracts in the areas of electric power supply and sales, natural gas, antitrust, transmission, joint facilities participation, coordination, PURPA issues and pooling. He has been heavily involved in electricity restructuring issues, fuels use, municipalization, stranded costs, nuclear, service area, franchise, and related matters. Mr. Jablon’s major litigation areas have consisted of:
Mr. Jablon was designated by the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit as a lead counsel and by transmission-dependent petitioners on behalf of municipal and cooperative transmission-dependent entities, including the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association, to advise the Court of Appeals in Transmission Access Policy Study Group v. FERC, 225 F.3d 667 (D.C. Cir. 2000), aff’d New York v. FERC, 535 U.S. 1 (2002). This was the appeal of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s major electricity restructuring “Order No. 888” cases. At Spiegel & McDiarmid, Mr. Jablon has been lead counsel on major cases, including those dealing with the application of antitrust principles to the energy industry and of obtaining economic and fair transmission access and pricing, mergers, market power issues, power plant participation and contracting, coordination and pooling, power supply and fuel terms, rates, nuclear cost overruns, and major natural gas litigation. Mr. Jablon has also participated in contracting, other negotiations and legislative representation. He has argued numerous appeals and has represented clients before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Rural Electrification Administration, and other agencies and courts. At the New York State Public Service Commission, Mr. Jablon supervised virtually all staff litigation before the Commission, participating in major agency, state, and federal cases, which included electric, natural gas, telephone, water, and transportation. At the Federal Power Commission, Mr. Jablon worked on appellate litigation and major natural gas area rate cases. These cases, which established ceiling prices for natural gas production over broad areas of the United States, include:
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SAMPLE SPEECHES: |
APPA 2002 Legal Seminar, October 27-30, 2002, “Market Abuse & Oversight” Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association 70th Annual Summer Meeting, August 28, 2002, “Federal Energy Regulatory Commission Standard Market Design Rulemaking and Market Power Issues” The 20th National Regulatory Conference, May 13-14, 2002, Marshall-Wythe School of Law, Williamsburg, Virginia, “Enron – Lessons Learned” Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association Conference, February 2002, “TRANSLink – Issues and Analysis” FMEA-FMPA Annual Conference, 2000, “How the Law Works: Why You Can Run a Red Light and Enforce Antitrust Laws” Michigan Association of Municipal Attorneys, 1998: The Electricity Revolution and Deregulation” Michigan Municipal League, 1998: “The Electricity Revolution” American Public Power Association Legal Seminar, 1997: “Above Market Costs” Iowa Municipal Electric Association, 1997: “On Transmission Issues” National Association of Attorneys General, 1996: “Antitrust Issues in Utility Deregulation” Minnesota Municipal Utilities Association, 1994: “Network Transmission: A Sea of Change at FERC” Numerous presentations before public power education conferences and other organizations concerning economic regulation, antitrust law, transmission, gas, nuclear power, and municipalization, as well as on legislative and related matters. |
PUBLISHED WORKS: |
“The High Court’s Antitrust Thunderbolts,” Public Power, (November/ December 2007) “Dispelling myths: A real world perspective on Trinko,” The Antitrust Bulletin – The Journal of American and Foreign Antitrust and Trade Regulation: Vol. 50, No. 4/Winter 2005 “Against Great Odds: The Florida Story,” June 27, 2005 “Verizon Communications v. Trinko: The Message for Cities is Caution,” Municipal Lawyer Magazine (November-December 2004) “The Trinko Ruling: The Sky Is Not Falling, But It Is Getting Cloudy,” Public Power, May-June 2004, with Mark S. Hegedus “Enron – Lessons to Be Learned,” MEUW Newsletter Live Lines (February, 2003) “Antitrust is the Answer,” published in the Legal Times, June 10, 2002 “The Enron Spin,” Public Utilities Fortnightly, February 15, 2002 “Conscious Parallelism: Can it turn a corner?” Infrastructure, the Journal of the American Bar Association’s Section of Public Utility, Communications and Transportation Law, Vol. 40, Nos. 2-4, Winter/Spring/Summer 2001 “Antitrust Laws – Our Charter of Economic Freedom,” TransActions, a publication of GDS Associates, 2000 “High Cost Utilities’ Revenues – Stranded?” Competitive Utility, 1996 “FMPA v. FPL: The FERC Takes Another Step Toward Network Transmission,” The Electricity Journal, 1996 “Welcome Back, Courts: The New Energy in Antitrust,” Competitive Utility, 1996 “Barriers to Municipalization,” Competitive Utility, 1996 “Some Observations on Strategic Considerations for Transmission Agreements and Kittens in the South,” Infocast, 1995 “Power Transmission Access, Pricing and Policy: Network Transmission Access, Wave of the Future?” Infocast, 1993 “Competitive Markets First, PUHCA ‘Reform’ Later,” Electricity Journal, 1991 (co-author) “The Legal Standard of ‘Prudent Utility Practices’ in the Context of Joint Construction Projects,” 20-21 NRECA-APPA Legal Reporting Service, 1984 “A Legal Analysis of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners on Investment Income and Profitability,” An Independent Report to the National Association of Insurance Commissioners Task Force on Profitability and Investment Income, 1983 “Growth and Public Utilities,” Bar Association of the City of New York Journal, 1972 Co-author of the Federal Power Commission section of the 1970 edition of West’s Federal Practice Manual Iowa Association of Municipal Utilities Annual Meeting, February 17, 2005; Speaker: FMEA-FMPA Annual Meeting, July 2005, on “Against Great Odds: The Florida Story” Mr. Jablon has also been involved in various civic activities, speaking activities and pro bono cases. |
REPRESENTATIVE CASES: |
TAPS v. FERC, 225 F.3d 667 (D.C. Cir. 2000), aff’d New York v. FERC, 535 U.S. 1 (2002). This is the appellate citation for the appeals of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission’s (FERC’s) major electricity restructuring “Order No. 888” cases. On behalf of various clients, Mr. Jablon participated in the FERC Order No. 888 proceedings and related proceedings, concerning open access transmission and rights of smaller publicly owned systems to receive comparable transmission access rights as monopoly transmission owners. As “lead counsel” he advised the United States Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit on these appeals on behalf of municipal and cooperative transmission-dependent entities, including the American Public Power Association and the National Rural Electric Cooperative Association. MidAmerican Energy Company, FERC Docket No. ER96-719 et. al., (2005), market rates proceeding, leading to successful negotiations and settlements under which Minnesota and Iowa municipalities (the Midwest Municipal Transmission Group) obtained MidAmerican Energy and Midwest grid ownership rights. Mr. Jablon continues to represent MMTG on market power, transmission ownership and Midwest ISO related matters. Florida Gas Transmission Co., S.D. Fla. No. 71-1494-CIV-CA: This case and related Federal Power Commission (now FERC) cases concerned allegations by certain Florida cities that Florida Gas Transmission Company violated a District Court decree obligating it to use its "best efforts" to sell natural gas to the cities and that it illegally diverted natural gas from the cities. The settlement of the case resulted in the then largest out-of-court settlement in the history of Florida. The case reopened Florida for industrial and generation gas after the post-OPEC natural gas shortage. Consumers Power Company (Midland Plant, Unit Nos. 1 & 2), NRC Docket Nos. 50-329-A, et al., 6 N.R.C. 892 (1977): The leading case concerning the application of the antitrust laws to the electric power industry in the context of Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) antitrust licensing jurisdiction, (which was repealed by the recent Energy Policy Act of 2005), the case is one of the major cases establishing cooperative and municipal antitrust rights. After a favorable NRC Appeal Board decision and after the Commission denied applications by Consumers Power Company for review, the Company agreed to a settlement. Mr. Jablon and his team negotiated the rates, terms and conditions for a filed transmission tariff; transmission ownership agreements in conjunction with plant ownership; generating plant access; electric coordination rights; wholesale power rights and litigation cash payments, among other things. Florida Municipal Power Agency v. Florida Power & Light Co., 839 F. Supp. 1563 (M.D. Fla. 1993), rev’d, 64 F.3d 614 (11th Cir. 1995), enforced, 81 F. Supp. 2d 1313 (M.D. Fla. 1999); Florida Power & Light Co., FERC Docket No. ER93-465-000; Florida Municipal Power Agency v. Florida Power & Light Co., FERC Docket Nos. EL93-51-000 and TX93-4-000, 65 F.E.R.C. ¶ 61,125 (1993), 67 F.E.R.C. ¶ 61,167 (1994), 74 F.E.R.C. ¶ 61,006 (1996): This was litigation over a municipal power supply agency's rights under NRC license conditions, contracts and antitrust laws to network transmission and wholesale power rights. FMPA v. FPL is a major case limiting application of the “filed rate” doctrine and establishing judicially enforceable relief against refusals to sell network transmission to dependent wholesale customers and competitors. These cases led to a nationwide precedent establishing power agency access to transmission on a "network" basis. The Eleventh Circuit held that FPL’s refusal to sell FMPA network transmission could be actionable under settlement agreements establishing NRC antitrust conditions and under the antitrust laws. After the District Court granted summary judgment to FMPA that FPL had breached its agreements to provide network service under the antitrust conditions, the case was settled favorably. Wisconsin Electric Power Co., Northern States Power Co., Cenergy, Inc., FERC Docket Nos. EC95-15-000, EC95-1356-000, ER95-1358-000: Mr. Jablon represented the Central Minnesota Municipal Power Agency in this merger case. CMMPA issues were settled favorably. CMMPA received network transmission rights with credit for CMMPA-owned transmission and network upgrades to provide for firm service, among other things. |
SIGNIFICANT PREVIOUS EMPLOYMENT: |
New York State Public Service Commission – Assistant General Counsel, Administrative Proceedings, 1970-1972. Federal Power Commission – Trial Attorney and Supervisory Trial Attorney, 1965-1970. Appellate and natural gas producer rates. Outstanding Performance Awards |
OTHER: |
Associate Member of the Year – Florida Municipal Electric Association, 1998-1999 Chair, Executive Enterprises Conference on Municipalization, Cambridge, MA, 1996 Member of the American Bar Association and the Energy Bar Association AV/Top Martindale-Hubbell rating |
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