Court Opinion

ID: 9559327
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 17:26:46.904232+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:10:43.933388
License: Public Domain

HENRIOD, Justice.
I dissent, though preferring to concur, knowing the main opinion arrives at a highly desirable result for Nephi citizens, that of obtaining lower power rates. But desired result cannot sustain a circumvention of the letter and spirit of the law and pertinent authorities. To the writer, the opinion cannot survive a logical, careful analysis. It cites the Logan City case1 as its authority. That case, belabored and verbose as it is, simply decided that the commission had no power to fix rates that the city is to charge, thus indicating only that municipal distribution of power was invulnerable to commission control. The main opinion fails to take into account the personality of the city as a customer, — not a distributor. Language in the Logan case makes it appear that that case actually is authority for the proposition that municipal purchase of power is subject to regulation by the commission.
As a purchaser of power, municipal personality should make no magic. There seems to be no valid reason why Nephi, as a customer, should be cast in any role different than Thermoid, a company which, to obtain power from a company franchised in a different area, was required by the commission to obtain the consent of the franchised supplier in the Nephi area.
Consumers are to be protected. So are pioneer suppliers in an area who furnish the risk capital, else the theory of public utility administration and regulation fails of purpose. No doubt Telluride’s rates are higher in the Nephi area, resulting from complex ratios between transmission distance and volume of consumption, causing higher unit operational and purchase costs. But higher or lower rates *292never have been the sole test of convenience and necessity certification.
We try to be ever mindful of the public weal. At the same time we know that historically and traditionally, public interest has been fostered by inviting and protecting, in reason, the risk capital and the area of its expenditure against economic interlopers. No doubt Telluride’s risk capital was expended partly to furnish cities with power as well as others, and the spirit of our statutes contemplates protection in the franchised area. But the main opinion takes from Telluride one of its customers, in the area which its certificate presumes to protect it, and not only gives that customer to a utility franchised elsewhere, but forces the foreign utility to accept the invading customer, giving rise to legitimate contitutional questions as-sertable by the latter utility.
Any future order of the commission, denying other cities in the area the privilege of connecting their lines at Mona, would be highly inconsistent with the decision here, until all ability of Utah Power to furnish power at Mona was exhausted. It takes little imagination, if the commission be consistent, to visualize a situation where, by a series of coparatively short connections, from Nephi backwards to one city after another, Telluride could lose every municipal customer in its area, and possibly its business to a point where other customers, less fortunate than the cities inoculated against control, would suffer from higher rates, poor service or no service at all.
Thus, by reaching a desired result, we may be rendering disservice unjustified by statute or authority, not only to Telluride, franchised distributor in the area, and its risk capital, but to a large group of consumers, resulting in an inversion of the spirit and a perversion of the letter of laws designed to protect both distributor and consumer.
WOLFE, C. J., having disqualified himself does not participate herein.

 Logan City v. Public Utilities Commission, 72 Utah 536, 271 P. 961.