Court Opinion

ID: 9590212
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 23:52:36.32218+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:12:05.502381
License: Public Domain

GORDON, R.J.,
dissenting.
In enacting Code § 56-46.1 in 1972, the General Assembly included a grandfather clause by providing the statute should apply only to transmission lines for which right-of-way acquisitions had not been completed on April 8, 1972. The acquisitions for the transmission line involved in this case were completed before April 8, 1972. So by the clear terms of Code § 56-46.1, the statute does not apply.
Recently, the General Assembly concluded that the grandfather clause was too broad. In 1983, it amended the statute to make it apply prospectively to all transmission lines. Because the Act expressly made the amendment inapplicable to cases in litigation, the amendment does not apply to this case.
Although restricted to Code § 56-46.1 as originally enacted, the Commission added a provision that did not appear in the statute. The Commission ruled that Code § 56-46.1 applied not only to transmission lines built on rights-of-way acquired after April 8, 1972, as the statute required, but also to transmission lines supplanting existing transmission lines built on rights-of-way, whether acquired before or after that date. In so ruling, the Commission amended the statute, a function it should have left to the General Assembly.
This Court has decided two cases involving Code § 56-46.1, VEPCO v. Citizens, 222 Va. 866, 284 S.E.2d 613 (1981), and Fairfax County v. VEPCO, 222 Va. 870, 284 S.E.2d 615 (1981).
*390Citizens did not concern the grandfather clause. In my opinion, it has nothing to do with this case.
Fairfax concerned, as does this case, the grandfather clause and a new transmission line that would (in part) supplant at a higher voltage an existing line. The Court held Code § 56-46.1 applicable because Vepco had not acquired requisite rights-of-way before April 8, 1972. The underlying rationale of the opinion, as I read it, is that had the rights-of-way been acquired before April 8, 1972, Code § 56-46.1 would not have been applicable.
COCHRAN, J., joins in dissent.