Source: https://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/248/372
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 06:12:31+00:00

Document:
Argued: and Submitted Dec. 18, 1918.
Messrs. R. Douglas Feagin and Rudolph S. Wimberly, both of Macon, Ga., for plaintiff in error.
Messrs. Roland Ellis, of Macon, Ga., and Thomas W. Hardwick, of Sandersville, Ga., for defendant in error.
Soon thereafter the Dry Goods Company commenced this suit to compel specific performance of its contract, which had three years yet to run; to enjoin the Service Corporation from charging the higher rate, and from executing a threat to cut it off from a supply of electricity, because of failure to pay the increased rate.
Of the several claims pressed in argument, we need notice only two: That the obligation of the contract of July 18, 1912, was impaired, and that the plaintiff in error was deprived of its property without due process of law, by the decision of the Supreme Court of Georgia, holding that the rates prescribed by the Railroad Commission were valid and superseded those of the contract between the parties.
Long prior to the contract of 1912 the Railroad Commission was given jurisdiction over, and power to regulate, the rates of electric light and power companies by statutes in form not greatly different from those of many other states, and, since no reason is assigned for assailing their validity, other than the result in this case, they must be accepted as valid laws.
As we have seen, the rates prescribed by the Commission were declared by it to be reasonable and the Service Company was given authority to charge them. The plaintiff in error did not assert in its pleadings, or offer evidence tending to prove, that these commission rates were unreasonable, but complained, only that they were higher than the contract rates, and for this reason, it argued, that to give effect to the order as the state Supreme Court did, violated the provisions of the Constitution referred to.
The presumption of law is in favor of the validity of the order, and the plaintiff in error did not deny, as it could not successfully, that capital invested in an electric light and power plant to supply electricity to the inhabitants of a city is devoted to a use in which the public has an interest which justifies rate regulation by a state in the exercise of its police power. Munn v. Illinois, 94 U. S. 113, 24 L. Ed. 77; Budd v. New York, 143 U. S. 517, 12 Sup. Ct. 468, 36 L. Ed. 247; German Alliance Ins. Co. v. Lewis, Superintendent of Insurance of the State of Kansas, 233 U. S. 389, 407, 34 Sup. Ct. 612, 58 L. Ed. 1011, L. R. A. 1915C, 1189.
Thus it will be seen that the case of the plaintiff in error is narrowed to the claim that reasonable rates, fixed by a state in an appropriate exercise of its police power, are invalid for the reason that if given effect they will supersede the rates designated in the private contract between the parties to the suit, entered into prior to the making of the order by the Railroad Commission.
PUBLIC UTILITIES COMMISSION OF RHODE ISLAND et al. v. ATTLEBORO STEAM & ELECTRIC CO.
PATTERSON v. STANOLIND OIL & GAS CO. et al.
JERSEY CENTRAL POWER & LIGHT CO. v. FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION. NEW JERSEY POWER & LIGHT CO. v. SAME.

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