FCC ALJ Denies Arm& Rage Motion to Compel EB Answers
FCC Administrative Law Judge Jane Halprin denied a motion from broadcaster Arm & Rage asking the ALJ to compel responses to its interrogatories from the FCC Enforcement Bureau, said an order in Tuesday’s Daily Digest, in docket 21-122. The questions…
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involved were unlikely to lead to admissible evidence, Halprin ruled. Arm & Rage’s license for WJBE (AM) Powell, Tennessee was designated for hearing after principal Joseph Armstrong -- a former Tennessee state legislator -- was convicted of making a false statement on a 2008 tax form connected with profits from the sale of cigarette tax stamps after the legislature increased the state’s cigarette tax. Arm & Rage wanted the ALJ to compel responses to questions on whether WJBE’s violations of several FCC public file requirements were prejudicial, and on the bases for the EB’s contention that Armstrong isn’t fit to be an FCC licensee. “The basis for the character qualifications issue has been thoroughly explained in the order designating the case for hearing,” wrote Halprin. On the merits of the FCC public file rules, Halprin said “Arm & Rage appears to be trying to make the case that the proposed sanction is out of proportion to the violations.” That's an argument the broadcaster can make in its own case, but “the Enforcement Bureau’s opinion of its merits is not a useful or proper avenue of discovery,” Halprin said. Arm & Rage also urged the ALJ to excuse the broadcaster from answering any questions of the type the EB didn’t have to answer, to make the case “symmetrical.” Discovery in FCC hearing proceedings is “inherently” not symmetrical, Halprin said. “That is because in any FCC hearing proceeding concerning the actions of a Commission licensee, regardless of which party bears the burden of proof, the licensee is typically the repository of the relevant factual information at the center of the case.”