Court Opinion

ID: 9306523
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2022-12-02 17:17:28.714636+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:13:56.115005
License: Public Domain

On Petition for Rehearing.
(April 18, 1893.)
SAGE, District Judge.
An application has been made, in the nature of a petition for rehearing, which brings up for consideration the proposition that the provisions of section 10 should be no longer enforced for the reason that gas cannot be furnished without loss to the company at the rate thereby fixed. The company filed its written acceptance of the ordinance of March 28, 1889, and thereby assented that the rate fixed by section 10 was reasonable. It is averred in the answers of the receiver and of the complainant that 10 cents per thousand cubic feet for the use of natural gas furnished by meter is an utterly inadequate price. That averment must, for the purposes of this consideration, be taken as true. The inadequacy may bear heavily upon the complainant, Tout it cannot affect the construction or the validity or force of the section. The complainant accepted the ordinance, and its only remedy now is to appeal to the council.
My attention has been called to the fact, inadvertently misstated in the last paragraph of the opinion on file, that the first section of the ordinance of December 23, 1887, expired by its own limitation five years from and after the date at which the ordinance took effect; that is to say, at the same time as the contract. That circumstance, however, does not affect the ruling of the court. The expiration of section 1 of the ordinance of December 23, 1887, was by its own limitation, and not by reason of the contract. Section 10 of the ordinance of March 28, 1889, does not in the least depend upon section 1 of the ordinance of December 23, 1887. In so far as it fixes a maximum, it is simply a legislative provision. It is in full force, and will remain in force until amended or repealed. That maximum was by section 15 adopted as the minimum under the contract, but that adoption did not in any way affect the operation or duration of the price fixed by section 10 as the maximum. 'When the contract expired, that price ceased to he operative as a minimum, but it remained in full force as a maximum.
The application for rehearing will he denied.