“ Perhaps out-of-time action may be justified in some instances where the time interval between a finally decided case and a subsequent contrary decision of this Court is short. But we do not have that situation here, where more than 15 months elapsed between the denial of certiorari in Ohio Power (October 17, 1955) and our decisions in Allen-Bradley and National Lead (January 22, 1957) , and where in the interval the Court had twice denied rehearing, with the very factors before it which are now said to justify its present action. ”

“ There is nothing to distinguish it from any other suit for a money judgment in which a conflict turns up long after certiorari and rehearing have been denied. The most that can be said in justification of the Court's action is that otherwise Ohio Power would not have to pay taxes which Allen-Bradley and National Lead must pay as a result of the much later decisions in their cases. ”

“ Had the Government, just prior to June 11, 1956, petitioned to vacate the order of December 5, 1955, the petition would have violated Rule 58 of our Revised Rules, whether considered as, in effect, a petition for rehearing of that order, in which case it would have been out of time, or as a petition for rehearing of the original denial of certiorari, in which case it would have been both out of time and 'consecutive.' [9] To say that the order of June 11 could escape Rule 58 because it was made on the Court's initiative seems to me to involve the most hypertechnical sort of reasoning. ”

“ Yet the Court twice faced and rejected that very possibility many months ago, (1) when it denied the Government's timely petition for rehearing, despite the request that consideration of it be deferred until the Court of Appeals had decided the National Lead case, and (2) when it denied the Government's second, and untimely, petition for rehearing in the face of the conflict with National Lead. And in any event, this is surely not the kind of injustice that warrants overriding the policy of finality of adjudication. What has happened here is commonplace ”