Court Opinion

ID: 9538496
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-07 07:37:04.729041+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T14:57:55.737960
License: Public Domain

OPALA, Justice,
concurring specially:
In the district court suit here under consideration telephone subscribers in petitioner’s suburban Jones-Choctaw exchange seek to recover unearned charges paid to petitioner for toll-free access to the Oklahoma City metropolitan exchange area (of S. W. Bell Tel. Co.), a Corporation-Commission-mandated service whose delivery allegedly went either completely unperformed or was “insufficiently and defectively” carried out because of inadequate equipment or faulty maintenance and operation.
A controversy over the value of unperformed or inadequate public utility service is by its very nature one for rebate or refund. The gist of the dispute is to fix the legal rate properly to be charged for the service actually rendered when that service is alleged to vary in character from one that was mandated by a previous rate-fixing order of the commission. Our Constitution reposes in the commission exclusive *670original jurisdiction over rate making.1 It makes no difference whether the power is exercised prospectively, as it is when rates are fixed for future service, or retrospectively as in a case such as the present where it is complained that mandated service already delivered by a utility was of a quality or quantity having less value than that which is required by the previous commission rate-making order.2 In short, whenever a tribunal is called upon to determine whether utility-rendered service has earned the full charges lawfully prescribed therefor, less than the fixed legal rate or nothing at all, the issue presented requires an exercise of rate-making authority which lies exclusively in the commission. As our Constitution clearly commands, the commission’s exercise of rate-making authority may never be “questioned” anywhere else except on regular review prescribed by law.3
This conclusion, which appears on its face somewhat unreasonable and overly restrictive (in that it deprives consumers of access to the ordinary courts of justice and of their right to jury trial), is essential to preserve inviolate the commission’s constitutional responsibility to protect the rate-paying public as a whole. Were consumers to be allowed to sue in court and bring their grievances before different juries, our carefully constructed institutional design, intended to maintain rate uniformity and prevent discriminatory rebates, would soon be destroyed beyond any possibility of repair.
If our construction here be contrary to present-day consumer interests, the remedy lies with the Legislature. It has the power to alter the Constitution’s design. Art. 9 § 35, Okl.Con.
I am authorized to state that LAVENDER, C. J., and IRWIN, V. C. J., concur in these views.

. Art. 9 §§ 18 and 24 Okl.Con.

. Nowata Co. Gas Co. v. State, 72 Okl. 184, 177 P. 618; Oklahoma Nat. Gas Co. v. State, 78 Okl. 5, 188 P. 338; Oklahoma Nat. Gas Co. v. State, 110 Okl. 297, 236 P. 893.

. Art. 9 §§ 20 and 24, Okl.Con. If this had been a suit simply to compel a clear legal duty, i. e. service delivery as contemplated or mandated by previous commission order, instead of to recover unearned portion of the fixed rate, district court would have had concurrent jurisdiction with the commission. Southwestern Natural Gas Co. v. Cherokee Public Service Co., 172 Okl. 325, 44 P.2d 945, 948.