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Tesoro Petroleum Corporation v. State2/15/2002
s should be five years, beyond which the State could request documents only after a "proper showing" to the superior court. According to Tesoro, this two-step approach would prevent the imposition of undue burden and expense to Tesoro while permitting the attorney general to perform its duty of investigation. We decline to impose Tesoro's two-step approach; such an approach has no statutory basis and has been rejected by courts.
Tesoro's attempt to portray the investigation as only concerning recent gasoline pricing is wholly unconvincing. The two illustrative graphs in the State's trial brief are just that -- illustrative. They do not limit or define the temporal scope of the investigation. In addition, numerous courts have held that "the temporal scope of discovery in antitrust suits should not be confined to the limitations of the antitrust statutes." In light of the discussion of general deference to the government in investigative subpoenas, and the representations in the record which support the court's finding, the superior court did not abuse its discretion by finding that documents dating back ten years are relevant to the investigation.
3. Product scope
The CID requests documents relating to "petroleum products," defined as "any of the following fuels: motor fuel gasoline, No. 2 diesel, low sulfur fuel oil, high sulfur fuel oil, heating oil, jet fuel, 'JP4' jet fuel, aviation gas, bunker/fuel oil and marine diesel." Tesoro argues that the investigation only focuses on one product, gasoline, and therefore the CID should pertain only to documents relating to that product.
Tesoro contends that the statute's judicial review provisions and the judiciary's role is weakened if the attorney general can control the parameters of the request through its own definition of the investigation. As Tesoro correctly notes, AS 45.50.592 interposes the power of the courts into the administrative process to protect the public from unreasonable demands by the attorney general.
The superior court justified its holding that the State's request for documents regarding all "petroleum products" was reasonable with the statement that such documents would help the attorney general to "better understand how the movement of certain products within the market affects pricing of gasoline products."
Tesoro raises two objections to the court's explanation. On one hand, Tesoro argues that " he Superior Court's reasoning is simply wrong. The pricing of such unrelated products as heating fuel or jet fuel, for example, has no relevance to the pricing of gasoline." On the other hand, even if that information was relevant, in Tesoro's view, the court erred by not considering the burden to Tesoro in producing these documents in relation to the attorney general's burden if the documents were not produced. According to Tesoro, " he marginal relevance that documents relating to fundamentally different petroleum products may have with respect to the issue of gasoline pricing is vastly outweighed by the burden and expense Tesoro will incur in producing such documents to date."
At oral argument to the superior court the State addressed Tesoro's contention that the State's investigation only involved the issue of gasoline. The State argued that
the reason we have asked for information beyond just gasoline is that a barrel, of course, is cut many different ways, depending on the hydrocarbons that are in the oil. Some parts of the oil are refined differently. We feel that in order to explain a particular margin on . . . one cut of the barrel, we have to understand what the companies did with the other part.
Given the State's explanat
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