Court Opinion

ID: 9670308
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-24 03:18:42.935898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:16:03.801792
License: Public Domain

VANDE WALLE, Chief Justice,
concurring in result.
Presumably the money Capital Electric spent in constructing a 1,450 foot line to serve the DOT location, the money MDU spent in applying for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to serve the same location, the money Capital Electric spent in opposing MDU’s application and the money both Capital Electric and MDU spent in appeals to the district court and this Court have more significance than to determine whether Capital Electric or MDU will provide electricity for a headbolt heater!
My impression is that the money was spent because each party is concerned the other party will get a “leg up” in the construction and application of so called Territorial Integrity Law. If that be so, there must be a better way to resolve the meaning of the statutes. A legislative clarification might be one. When there is discussion of reduced federal funds available for rural electric cooperatives and consumers are complaining be-caüse public utility electric rates are too high, reasonable people should be able to find better and less expensive methods of resolving these long-standing disputes as to the authority to provide electric service. Nevertheless, the money has been spent and the dispute is before us for resolution. I. agree with the result reached by the majority but for different reasons.
At the time MDU applied for a certificate of public convenience and necessity to provide electricity for the headbolt heater at the DOT site, Capital Electric had completed the 1,450 foot extension of its line and was providing service to the site. Service was being provided in accordance with the law. Under those circumstances, the PSC should have denied MDU’s request. Whether Capital Electric was well advised to construct the line for this limited service is not material for our purposes, because under the current law it was permitted to do so. Whether the law should be amended to avoid an expenditure of this size to serve a limited need when closer service is available at presumably less cost is a matter for legislative determination.
I am skeptical of, and do not embrace, the majority’s attempted fine-line distinction between the PSC’s jurisdiction to hear a matter and its authority to consider public convenience and necessity. The distinction is, to me, without a difference. Indeed, I agree that whether or not a customer has requested service is a significant piece of evidence in determining whether or not public convenience and necessity requires a certificate to serve, but it is not conclusive. In this instance, the better rationale is that service was being legally provided so there was no need for the certificate.
I assume the majority’s attempted distinction is made because Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, 153 N.W.2d 414 (N.D.1967) held unconstitutional as an invalid delegation of legislative powers to determine who furnished electrical service in rural areas, a provision that required the rural electric’s consent before a public utility could extend electric service to an area beyond the corporate limits of the municipality. But I see no substantial difference in requiring a custom*594er request as a condition precedent to determining whether public convenience and necessity requires such service. In either instance there is a delegation of authority. The majority’s interpretation as well as the PSC’s prior construction that a customer request for service by a public utility is necessary in order to invoke the PSC’s jurisdiction to determine public convenience and necessity answers a question not necessary to decide in this case and does so in a manner which raises constitutional questions, in view of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, supra.1
Ordinarily the question of a certificate of public convenience and necessity will not arise without a customer request, i.e., if no customer no necessity for service. However, I believe lack of a request is an evidentiary rather than a jurisdictional matter, particularly in view of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co. v. Johanneson, supra, and Application of Montana-Dakota Utilities Co., 219 N.W.2d 174 (N.D.1974) holding that customer preference does not govern the PSC in its decision.
Because the evidence reveals that electricity was being provided for the headbolt heater within the law, there was no need for the certificate of public convenience and necessity. I concur in the result.

. Justice Teigen dissented. He construed the statutes so that electric service could not be provided by an electric cooperative if the potential customer for central-station service refused to contract with the cooperative.