Court Opinion

ID: 9617473
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:55:57.51941+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:04:09.723887
License: Public Domain

*269Judge WELLS
concurring in the result.
The “Yellow Pages” of Southern Bell’s telephone directories are an integral part of its providing telephone service to the public. The Yellow Pages are a convenient and helpful service to telephone customers, without which those customers would have to resort to wasteful, time-consuming searches for important information on countless sources of a huge variety of services needed by telephone customers.
Additionally, Southern Bell, by its own activities, holds itself out to the public as being the provider of its Yellow Pages. In the Yellow Pages themselves, one finds prominent and frequent references to “The Southern Bell Yellow Pages,” such references clearly intended to both attract advertisers and to increase telephone subscriber’s reliance on the Yellow Pages.
I find the “separateness” of Southern Bell and BAPCO to be illusory. It is more reasonable to assume that BAPCO is a mere business device by or through which Southern Bell has its Yellow Pages processed and printed, and that BAPCO is therefore the agent or the alter ego of Southern Bell in its Yellow Pages role.
I believe, however, that the majority has reasonably used applicable North Carolina case law precedents to reach the result of holding that BAPCO is not subject to commission regulation, and I therefore concur in the result.