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Washington Administrative Code (Last Updated: November 23, 2016) |
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Title 480. Utilities and Transportation Commission |
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Chapter 480-07. Procedural rules. |
Section 480-07-460. Hearing—Predistribution of exhibits and prefiled testimony.
Latest version.
- (1) Predistribution of evidence. The commission may require parties to distribute their proposed evidence to other parties before the start of the evidentiary hearing. In general rate proceedings for electric, natural gas, pipeline, and telecommunications companies, the petitioner must prefile its proposed direct testimony and exhibits at the time it files its rate increase request, in accordance with WAC 480-07-510. The commission may convene a prehearing conference shortly before a scheduled hearing and require all parties to predistribute their proposed cross-examination exhibits.(a) Number of copies to be filed or submitted; service. When predistribution of evidence other than proposed exhibits for use in cross-examination is required, each party must file the original plus twelve copies of its evidence with the commission unless the commission specifies a different number. When the commission requires parties to predistribute their proposed exhibits for use in cross-examination, each party must submit six copies to the bench if the commissioners are sitting as presiding officers and three copies if the commissioners are not sitting. The presiding officer may change the number of copies required. All proposed evidence must be served on all other parties to a proceeding whenever predistribution of evidence is required.(b) Changes or corrections.(i) Substantive corrections. Prefiled testimony may be revised to correct mistakes of fact asserted by a witness. Such mistakes may arise from a variety of causes such as scrivener's error, error in calculation, or error of misreported fact. Each party must advise all other parties of substantive corrections to any prefiled evidence as soon as the need for correction is discovered.(ii) Substantive changes. Parties must seek leave from the presiding officer by written motion if they wish to submit testimony that includes substantive changes other than to simply correct errors of fact asserted by a witness. A party proposing such changes may submit the proposed revisions with its motion.(iii) Minor corrections. Minor revisions to prefiled testimony and exhibits may be made to correct typographical errors, printing errors, and nonsubstantive changes (e.g., a change in a witness's address or employment). Counsel should not ask a witness on the stand to correct obvious typographical errors in the prefiled testimony or to make more than three minor substantive corrections. If more than three minor revisions are required, parties must prepare an errata sheet or a revised exhibit for submission at least one business day prior to the hearing to show such corrections to the prefiled evidence.(iv) Format requirements for revisions. Parties who submit revisions to predistributed or previously admitted testimony or exhibits must prominently label them "REVISED" and indicate the date of the revision. The revised portions must be highlighted, in legislative style or other manner that clearly indicates the change from the original submission. This practice must be followed even with minor changes that involve only one page of an exhibit. If one or more pages of multiple page testimony or exhibits are revised, the header or footer of the affected pages must be labeled "REVISED" and indicate the date of the revision. Parties may indicate changes to spreadsheets by providing a description of the change and how the change affects other related spreadsheets. For revisions to spreadsheets, counsel must identify partial revisions by page and date when an exhibit is presented for identification, sponsored, or offered into evidence, as appropriate.(c) Distribution at hearing. When a party offers new exhibits, revised exhibits, or errata sheets at a hearing, the party must provide sufficient copies for all parties and for the commission's distribution requirements. When the commission requires parties to predistribute their exhibits, a party may be required to establish good cause for any failure to predistribute a proposed exhibit, other than an exhibit offered solely for impeachment of the witness's testimony on the stand, or the exhibit may be excluded.(2) Prefiled testimony.(a) Exhibit numbers—Official record. The presiding officer will assign exhibit numbers to all prefiled testimony and exhibits at the final prehearing conference prior to hearing, or at hearing. These assigned numbers will be the exhibit numbers for purposes of the official record in the proceeding.(b) Parties are required to mark prefiled testimony and exhibits for identification. Parties must mark all written testimony and exhibits for identification in the upper right-hand corner of the first page prior to submission as follows:(i) State "Exhibit No.," followed by a blank underline. Then, on the same line, identify the sponsoring witness by including the witness's initials.(ii) Place a hyphen after the witness's initials and insert a number, beginning with Arabic numeral 1, and sequentially number each subsequent exhibit (including any subsequent written testimony) throughout the proceeding.(iii) Place the capital letter "C" after the number if the testimony or exhibit includes information asserted to be confidential under any protective order that has been entered in the proceeding.(iv) Place the capital letter "T" after the number if the exhibit is a witness's prefiled testimony.For example, John Q. Witness's prefiled testimony and accompanying exhibits must be marked as follows:Counsel and other party representatives who are unfamiliar with this method of identification may ask the presiding officer for further guidance.(c) Summary of testimony. Each witness must present a short summary of his or her prefiled testimony on the opening page or two of the testimony. Counsel or other party representative will be expected to ask as a foundation question when the witness takes the stand the subjects that will be covered by the witness. This foundation question should request, and the witness's response should include, only a statement of the subject(s) to be covered by the witness (e.g., rate of return on equity, cost of debt, prudence) and not a summary of the witness's positions on the subject(s) identified.(d) Form of testimony and exhibits. All prefiled testimony and exhibits must be paginated. In addition, line numbers must be set out on all prefiled testimony to facilitate transcript or exhibit references. All copies of prefiled testimony and exhibits must be provided on 8 1/2 x 11 inch, three-hole punched paper (oversize holes are preferred), double-spaced, 12-point type, using palatino, times new Roman, or an equally legible serif font, with footnotes in the same font and of at least 10-point type, with margins of at least one inch on all sides. Preprinted documents and spreadsheets need not conform to these typeface and type size requirements, but must be legible. Oversized documents may be used at the hearing for illustrative purposes but must be provided on 8 1/2 x 11 inch paper if offered into evidence and reduction to that format is feasible.(e) Submission requirements. All prefiled exhibits, both direct examination and cross-examination exhibits, must be individually separated by blank sheets with tabs.
Rules
480-07-510,