Court Opinion

ID: 9427173
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-02 23:19:57.480229+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:23:05.289985
License: Public Domain

Mr. Justice Stevens,
with whom The Chief Justice and Mr. Justice Rehnquist join,
dissenting.
In my judgment, the Court’s holding confuses and trivializes the principle that the State may not deprive any person of life, liberty, or property without due process of law. I have no quarrel with the Court’s conclusion that as a matter of Tennessee law a customer has a legitimate claim of entitlement to continued utility services as long as the undisputed portions of his utility bills are paid. For that reason, a municipality may not terminate utility service without giving the customer a fair opportunity to avoid termination either by paying the bill or questioning its accuracy. I do not agree, however, that this record discloses any constitutional defect in the termination procedures employed by the Light, Gas and Water Division of the city of Memphis (Division).
The Court focuses on two aspects of the Division’s collection procedures. First, according to the Court, the Division’s standard form of termination notice did not adequately inform the customer of the availability of a procedure for protesting a proposed termination of service as unjustified. Ante, at 15. Second, the Division did not afford its customers an adequate *23opportunity to meet with an employee who had the authority to settle billing disputes. Ante, at 18. Whether we consider the evidence describing the unusual dispute between the Crafts and the Division, or the evidence concerning the general operation of the Division’s collection procedures, I find no basis for concluding that either of the Court’s criticisms is justified; its conclusion that a constitutional violation has been proved is truly extraordinary.
Although the details of the dispute between the Crafts and the Division are obscure, the record describes the Division’s customary practices in some detail. Each month the Division terminates the service of about 2,000 customers.1 Terminations„are preceded by a written notice advising the customer of the date by which payment must be made to avoid a cutoff and requesting the customer to contact thé credit and collections department if he is having difficulty paying the bill.2 The notices contain a prominent legend: 3
“PHONE 523-0711 INFORMATION CENTER”
Calls to the listed phone number are answered by 30 or 40 Division employees, all of whom are empowered to delay cutoffs for three days based on representations made by customers over the phone. These employees also direct callers to credit counselors who are authorized to resolve disputes on a more permanent basis and who can set up extended payment plans for customers in financial difficulty.4
*24The District Court did not find that the Division's notice was defective in any respect or that its regular practices were not adequate to handle the Crafts’ unusual problems. The Crafts’ dispute with the Division stemmed from the use of two sets of meters to measure utility consumption in different parts of the Crafts’ home. Ante, at 4. The Crafts, believing they were being billed twice for the same utilities, did not pay on the second account. In fact, the two accounts were independent; because the Crafts refused to pay the balance on the second account, the Division terminated their service on several occasions.5 The District Court expressly found that the Division sent a final notice before each termination.
The District Court did not find that Mrs. Craft was unable to meet with credit department personnel possessing adequate authority to make an adjustment in her bill.6 She was successful in working out a deferred-payment arrangement but apparently was unable to have the amount of the bills reduced. The record therefore indicates that Mrs. Craft did meet with *25Division employees having adequate authority but simply failed to persuade any of them that there was any error in her bills.7
I
The Court’s constitutional objection to the Division’s notice rests entirely on the classic statement from Mullane v. Central Hanover Trust Co., 339 U. S. 306, 314:
“An elementary and fundamental requirement of due process in any proceeding which is to be accorded finality is notice reasonably calculated, under all the circumstances, to apprise interested parties of the pendency of the action and afford them an opportunity to present their objections.”
That statement identifies the two essential characteristics of adequate notice: It must inform the recipient of the impending loss; and it must be given in time to afford the recipient an opportunity to defend. These essentials must, of course, be expressed in terms which the layman can understand. The Division’s notice unquestionably satisfied these two basic requirements.8
No doubt there may be situations in which these two essen*26tials would not be sufficient to constitute fair notice. For example, if the notice describes a threatened loss which can only follow a prescheduled hearing, it must also inform the recipient of the time and place of the hearing. But I do not understand the Court to require municipal utilities to schedule a hearing before each termination notice is mailed. The Court seems to assume, as I do, that no hearing of any kind is necessary unless the customer has reason to believe he has been overcharged. Such a customer may protest his bill in either of two ways: He may communicate directly with the utility, or he may seek relief in court. In this case the Court finds the Division's notice constitutionally defective because it does not describe the former alternative.
The Division must “advise the customer of the availability of a procedure for protesting a proposed termination of utility service as unjustified.” Ante, at 15. That advice is much less valuable to the customer than an explanation of the legal remedies that are available if a wrongful termination should occur. Yet the Court wisely avoids holding that the customer must be given that sort of legal advice. The advice the Court does require is wholly unnecessary in all but the most unusual situations. For a homeowner surely need not be told how to complain about an error in a utility bill; it is, of course, helpful to include the telephone number and office address in the termination notice, but our democratic government would cease to function if, as the Court seems to' assume, our citizenry were unable to find such information on their own initiative. The Court's holding that the Division’s notice was constitutionally defective rests on a paternalistic predicate that I cannot accept.
Even accepting the Court’s predicate, a notice which advises customers to call the “information center” should be adequate; if not, it seems clear that advising customers to call, during normal business hours, a “dispute resolution center” manned by the same personnel would cure the constitu*27tional objection. Distinctions of this small magnitude are the appropriate concern of administrative rulemaking; they are too trivial to identify constitutional error.
II
The Courtis pronouncement “that due process requires the provision of an opportunity for the presentation to a designated employee of a customer’s complaint that he is being overcharged or charged for services not rendered,” ante, at 16, is equally divorced from the facts of this case. The Division processes more than 30,000 complaints of excess charges each year, and it has designated scores of employees to hear and investigate those complaints. Except for the Crafts’ troubles, there is nothing in the record to suggest that the Division’s customers are denied access to these employees, or that the employees lack the power to deal appropriately with meritorious complaints. Indeed, as already noted, there is no finding by either of the courts below that the Crafts themselves did not meet with responsible officials empowered to resolve their dispute.9
Although the Court’s pronouncement in this case is therefore gratuitous, it cannot be dismissed as harmless. For it warns municipal utilities that unless they provide “some kind of hearing,” ibid., they may be acting unconstitutionally. Just what, or why, additional procedural safeguards are constitutionally required is most difficult to discern.10
*28In deciding that more process is due, the Court relies on two quite different hypothetical considerations. First, the Court stresses the fact that disconnection of water or heating “may threaten health and safety.” Ante, at 18. Second, the Court discounts the value of the protection afforded by the available judicial remedies because the “factual disputes typically [involve] sums of money too small to justify engaging counsel or bringing a lawsuit.” Ante, at 21. Neither of these examples is disclosed by this record. The Crafts’ dispute involved only a relatively small amount, but they did obtain counsel and thereafter they encountered no billing problems.
Although the Division’s terminations number about 2,000 each month, the record does not reveal any actual case of harm to health or safety. The District Court found that the Division does not discontinue service when there is illness in a home. Since a customer can always avoid termination by the simple expedient of paying the disputed bill and claiming a refund,11 it is not surprising that the real emergency case is *29rare, if indeed it exists at all.12 When a true emergency does present a serious threat to health or safety, the customer will have ample motivation to take the important step of consulting counsel or filing suit even if the amount of his disputed bill is small. A potential loss of utility service sufficiently grievous to qualify as a constitutional deprivation can hardly be too petty to justify invoking the aid of counsel or the judiciary. Conversely, routine billing disputes too petty for the bench or the bar can hardly merit extraordinary constitutional protection.
Even if the customer does not consult counsel in a specific case, the potential damages remedy nevertheless provides far more significant protection against an unjustified termination than does the vague requirement of “some kind of hearing.” Without the threat of damages liability for mistakes, the informal procedures required today would neither qualify the utility’s ultimate power to enforce collection by terminating service nor deter the exercise of that power. On the other hand, even without specific informal procedures, the danger of substantial liability will by itself ensure careful attention to genuine customer disputes. The utility’s potential liability therefore provides customers with real pretermination protection even though damages may not be recovered until later.
The need for a procedural innovation is not demonstrated *30by the record in this judicial proceeding, but rather is justified on the basis of hypothetical examples, information gleaned from cases not before us, and legislative reports. See ante, at 18 nn. 20 and 21. These justifications suggest that the Court’s new rule is the product of a policy determination rather than a traditional construction of the Constitution. As judges we have experience in appraising the fairness of legal remedies and judicial proceedings, but we have no similar ability to balance the cost of scheduling thousands of billing conferences against the benefit of providing additional protection to the occasional customer who may be unable to forestall an unjustified termination.
It is an unfortunate fact that when the State assesses taxes or operates a utility, it occasionally overcharges the citizen. It is also unfortunate that effective collection procedures sometimes require the citizen to pay an unjust charge in order to forestall a serious deprivation of property. But if the State has given the citizen fair notice and afforded him procedural redress which is entirely adequate when invoked by his lawyer, the demands of the Due Process Clause are satisfied. I do not believe the Constitution requires the State- to employ procedures that are so simple that every lay person can always act effectively without the assistance of counsel.
I respectfully dissent.

 During the six months from September 1973 through February 1974, there were 11,216 so-called delinquent cutoffs. App. 74.

 The request to contact the credit department is contained in an enclosed "flyer” which also identifies the appropriate neighborhood location to be visited for credit assistance.

 See 534 F. 2d 684, 688 (CA6 1976).

 App. 126 and 161. Information center employees may also refer customers who complain about a high bill to a special unit that sends investigators to check for possible leaks or defects in the meter. Id., at 178.

 The trial judge evidently accepted the Division’s claim that it was engaged in “split billing” rather than “double billing.” The judge did express the “hope,” as a matter of “simple equity,” that the Division would issue a credit of $35 to cover duplicate and unnecessary charges and expenses incurred with respect to termination, but the amounts challenged by the Crafts as the result of “double billing” were considerably larger than $35. The reference to duplicate charges apparently concerns the $2.50 per month city service fee which was charged on each set of meters in the duplex until after they were consolidated. The unnecessary expense reference apparently covers both the time lost from work while Mrs. Craft was trying to straighten out their billing and the cost attributable to the termination. The District Court appears to have been persuaded that those costs could have been avoided if the Crafts had been given more help in the early stages of their dispute.

 The District Court stated that the “procedure for an opportunity to talk with the management was not adequately explained to Mrs. Craft.” The District Court was evaluating the Division’s explanation of its procedures; the court’s statement- does not mean that Mrs. Craft never met with a responsible official able to resolve her dispute.

 It is worth remembering that the Crafts' double-billing problem was eventually solved, and that the solution could only have been effected by a Division employee empowered to do so. Moreover, Mrs. Craft testified on direct examination that after being cut off she went to the Division’s office with the record of her payments on one account. She was told that she had to pay on the other account as well. Id., at 91. In other words, an official of the Division did resolve the Crafts’ dispute, correctly as it turned out. See n. 5, supra. The Division’s procedures would not be unconstitutional even if we assumed that Division employees, like federal judges, are occasionally discourteous and occasionally make mistakes. The Due Process Clause does not guarantee a correct or a courteous resolution of every dispute.

 It tells the customer that a cutoff is imminent and it allows the customer enough time to avoid a cutoff by paying under protest, by contacting the information center, or by beginning a legal action.

 See nn. 6 and 7, supra.

 A careful reading of the decision below and this Court’s decision indicates that the Court has modified as well as affirmed the Sixth Circuit’s view of procedural due process in a utility context. The Court of Appeals thought that this case was controlled by its earlier decision in Palmer v. Columbia Gas of Ohio, Inc., 479 F. 2d 153 (1973). Palmer ordered that cutoff notices be delivered personally by utility servicemen or sent by certified mail, return receipt requested. Id., at 159 and 166-167. The notice had to tell customers about available credit programs as well as possible dispute-resolving procedures. Ibid. The Palmer court also specified that *28the utility’s hearing officer had to send — by certified mail — a written, individual response to every complaining customer before authorizing a cutoff. Id., at 159-160, n. 9, and 167-169. Although the Division’s failure to observe these procedures was the foundation of the Court of Appeals’ ruling below, the Court quite .clearly does not approve the lower court’s view that these procedures are constitutionally mandated.

 If there is no constitutional objection to requiring a tenant to pay a disputed charge in order to retain possession of his home, I do not understand why there should be a more serious objection to requiring payment of a lesser charge in order to retain utility service. In Lindsey v. Normet, 405 U. S. 56, a tenant sought to defend a possessory action brought by his landlord for nonpayment of rent on the ground that the premises were uninhabitable and therefore there was no obligation to pay the rent. State law did not permit such a defense in a possessory action. In order to litigate that particular dispute, the tenant had to bring his own action against the landlord. If the tenant had not in fact paid the disputed rent, the landlord would prevail in the possessory action. Thus, in order to retain possession while litigating the dispute, the tenant not only had to pay the accruing rent (a requirement upheld in Lindsey, supra, at 65), *29but also had to pay the back rent, an obligation which he disputed. If he did not pay the back rent, he would lose in the possessory action and therefore would lose possession while he was prosecuting his own suit against the landlord. Thus, the Court sustained a procedure which required the payment of a disputed charge in order to maintain the status quo while litigating the dispute.

 Even the customer who is unable to pay his bill in full may forestall termination by a partial payment. Ante, at 5-6, n. 4. Perhaps this Court fashions its rule for the benefit of those customers who are unable to make even a partial payment. But if such persons cannot pay current, undisputed bills, their service may be terminated despite a bona fide dispute over a past bill; for no one has a constitutional right to free utility service.