Court Opinion

ID: 7810991
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-09-07 17:12:48.756285+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T16:30:28.289950
License: Public Domain

Humphreys, J. (concurring). I concur in the conclusion reached by the majority that appellant corporation was a public utility at the time it entered into the contracts between it and appellees, but upon entirely different grounds. I think it extremely doubtful, in the state of the evidence reflected by this record, if the power existed in appellant corporation to elect as between its private and public status, that such election had been made at the time the contracts were entered into. At that time franchises had not been granted to appellant to furnish gas to the general public in the nearby cities of Van Burén and Fort Smith; Appellant did not possess a pipe line and had not attempted to exercise the right of eminent domain to acquire a right-of-way for one. The contracts on their face contain preferential clauses which point unerringly to the fact that it was in the minds of the parties that appellant corporation was at the time a private corporation. Such clauses as these in a contract with a public utility would have rendered the contract void. I can hardly conceive that parties of such intelligence as these entered into a contract carrying clauses which necessarily rendered the contract, from its very inception, void. The parties were certainly attempting to enter into a valid contract and could have done so only upon the theory that appellant was a private corporation, and not a public utility. The character of business conducted by appellant was subject to regulation by the State, and, being subject to such regulation, the State might at any time convert such a corporation into a public utility by conferring upon it the power to exercise the right of eminent domain. Such right could Dot be conferred upon a private corporation any more than upon a private person; so the very act of conferring the right of eminent domain upon a private corporation, organized for the purpose of developing and marketing natural gas in the State, converts it eo mstanti into a public corporation. The power to exercise the right of eminent domain, and not the exercise thereof, is the mark which stamps its character upon it. My interpretation therefore of section 3969 of Crawford & Moses’ Digest is that all corporations, theretofore or thereafter incorporated for the purpose of developing, producing and marketing natural gas in this State, are public utilities. . Immediately upon the passage of that act, the right to exercise eminent domain vested in such a corporation and did not remain in abeyance until such corporation elected to exercise it. Any corporation organized thereafter for such' purpose became invested with such power, and the power did not remain in abeyance until it chose to exercise it. The character of a corporation must be tested by its powers, and not the exercise of them. If a corporation has the power to exercise the right of eminent domain, it is necessarily a public corporation. So long as it is a private corporation, it can not possess snob, power. Interpreting the statute as I do, appellant was a public utility by virtue of the law at the time it entered into the contracts, as it appears from the undisputed evidence that it was organized for the purpose of producing and marketing natural gas in this State. By request, I note Mr. Justice Wood in agreement with this concurring opinion.