Court Opinion

ID: 9542161
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 16:31:34.649082+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T15:06:51.720225
License: Public Domain

ROSE, Justice,
specially concurring, in which McCLINTOCK, Justice, joins.
I concur in the majority’s result, but I am unable to subscribe to the manner and method by which it is reached.
First, I fail to see why an extended discussion of the City’s power of eminent domain is necessary. My inquiry tells me that the appellant is not challenging the City’s power to condemn the utility’s property. That is not in issue here. Tri-County’s concern is with the question of just compensation, which the majority properly finds was not an issue in this proceeding. We should, therefore, be addressing our attention only to the effect of the parties’ 1960 agreement and the subsequent P.S.C. Certificate of Convenience and Necessity.
Secondly, with regard to the real issue in this case, I would have simply found that neither the 1960 agreement, nor the P.S.C. Certificate, purported to grant to Tri-County the perpetual and exclusive right to service the areas in question. Both documents — and especially the P.S.C. Certificate — expressly recognize that the definitions of service-area boundaries contained therein were subject to the power of the City of Gillette to extend its electric system. Even if these writings could somehow be construed to grant some type of exclusive franchise to Tri-County, I would have, nevertheless, found that the contract between the parties could, at most, be construed to continue in force only at the will of the parties and to be terminable upon reasonable notice. Police Protective Association of Casper v. City of Casper, Wyo., 575 P.2d 1146. As for the P.S.C. Certificate, it would have been my judgment that the P.S.C. lost jurisdiction over services within the City’s corporate limits, as extended by annexation, by virtue of the statutory amendment now contained in § 37-1-101(a)(vi)(H), W.S.1977.