Court Opinion

ID: 9675270
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 04:47:40.253009+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:32.990100
License: Public Domain

On Rehearing.
GOODWYN, Justice.
The Company has applied for a rehearing. The only question raised concerns that portion of the opinion and judgment relating to the continuance in force and effect of the supersedeas order made in the circuit court and the bonds given pursuant thereto. The Company charges error “in not holding, ordering, adjudging and decreeing that Tn the meantime, until the Commission shall determine the lawful rates and charges for the future, Southern Bell Telephone and Telegraph Company has the right to charge the rates as proposed by it in the schedule filed with the Alabama Public Service Commission on January 20, 1954, without the necessity of filing any supersedeas or other bond; and all supersedeas bonds heretofore filed in this cause by said company are discharged and all parties thereto freed from any liability thereunder.’ ”
We are unable to agree with the Company’s position. We think what was said on final rehearing in Birmingham Electric Co. v. Alabama Public Service Commission, 254 Ala. 140, 157, 47 So.2d 455, 470, supra, which we reaffirm, is decisive of the question, viz.:
“ * * * [T]he remandment ordered by authority of § 82, Title 48, Code 1940, is what it purports to be under the terms of that statute. That is to say, it becomes the duty of the Commission and it is directed to set the cause down for further proceedings and the taking of- evidence as is available to the utility, and that the Commission, on the basis of such proceedings and evidence as shall be submitted, in connection with that previously taken, shall make a redetermination of the issues there made and determine whether the proposed rate, or what new rate, if any, shall be approved by the Commission, subject to further appeal as may be provided by law. Until such an order is made and the cause finally determined, or otherwise finally disposed of, it remains in fieri. Until that time the supersedeas order first made and the bond given in accordance with it remain in effect. * * * ”
The original opinion has been revised in several minor respects, but in no way altering the holding of the court.
The application for rehearing is overruled.
All the Justices concur.