Court Opinion

ID: 9516979
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-06 23:58:40.967109+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:42:44.185372
License: Public Domain

Read, J. (concurring).
I would affirm the Appellate Division’s order on the ground that petitioners’ claims are barred by the filed rate doctrine. Thus, I do not reach the constitutional issues that engage the majority.
“The considerations underlying the [filed rate] doctrine . . . are preservation of the [ratesetting] agency’s primary jurisdiction over reasonableness of rates and the need to insure that regulated companies charge only those rates of which the agency has been made cognizant” (Arkansas Louisiana Gas Co. v Hall, 453 US 571, 577-578 [1981], quoting City of Cleveland, Ohio v Federal Power Commn., 525 F2d 845, 854 [DC Cir 1976] [internal quotation marks omitted]). The doctrine thus “forbids a regulated entity to charge rates [to customers] for its services other than those properly filed *495with the appropriate . . . regulatory authority” (id. at 577). A customer may sue the agency to obtain judicial review of a rate, but may not collaterally attack the rate in any other type of lawsuit to invalidate or modify it, or seek damages based on the difference between the filed rate and some other rate thought by the customer to be more reasonable (see Wegoland Ltd. v NYNEX Corp., 27 F3d 17, 19 [2d Cir 1994]). This rule is “undeniably strict and . . . may work hardship in some cases,” but is necessary to further the legislative goal of preventing unreasonable and discriminatory charges (American Telephone & Telegraph Co. v Central Office Telephone, Inc., 524 US 214, 222 [1998], quoting Louisville & Nashville R. Co. v Maxwell, 237 US 94, 97 [1915] [internal quotation marks omitted]).
On October 30, 2003, the Public Service Commission (PSC) approved a modified rate structure permitting MCI Worldcom Communications, Inc. (MCI) to charge specified rates for inmate collect calls. As a result, petitioners paid the only rate that MCI was legally authorized to charge for these calls (see Public Service Law § 92 [2] [d] [utilities may collect only charges that are filed with the PSC and in effect]). On the importance of the PSC’s action, the Appellate Division’s decision in Bullard v State of New York (307 AD2d 676 [3d Dept 2003]) is instructive. There, the court affirmed the trial judge’s dismissal of a claim for damages—which arose from the New York State Department of Correctional Services’ (DOCS) 1996 contract with MCI (the predecessor to the contract involved in this lawsuit)— because the statute of limitations had lapsed, and “ [additionally . . . the alleged injury . . . arose directly from [claimants’] payment of the filed rate approved by the PSC” (id. at 678; see also Porr v NYNEX Corp., 230 AD2d 564, 568 [2d Dept 1997], Iv denied 91 NY2d 807 [1998] [“It has repeatedly been held that a consumer’s claim, however disguised, seeking relief for an injury allegedly caused by the payment of a rate on file with a regulatory commission, is viewed as an attack upon the rate approved by the regulatory commission. All such claims are barred by the ‘filed rate doctrine’ ”]).
Here, the PSC declined to review and approve the portion of the inmate collect call rate attributable to DOCS’s commission when it ruled on MCI’s proposed modified rate structure. This fact does not cut the ground from under the filed rate doctrine in this case, though, because the PSC nonetheless directed MCI to file the total rate—including the commission—which thereby became binding law and “the only lawful charge” that MCI *496could impose for inmate collect calls (American Telephone & Telegraph Co. v Central Office Telephone, Inc., 524 US at 222 [internal quotation marks omitted]). As the majority observed in Walton v New York State Dept. of Correctional Servs. (8 NY3d 186, 196 [2007] [Walton i]), “[w]hile the PSC concluded that it did not have jurisdiction over DOCS, it could have [rejected] MCI’s call rate and surcharge as a whole” (emphasis added).1 It was for this reason alone that the Walton I court found petitioners’ lawsuit to be timely, reckoning that their claims accrued on October 30, 2003 because up until the point of the PSC’s order their alleged injuries might have been ameliorated (id. at 197). Thus, as in other filed rate cases, petitioners’ ostensible damages arise from a rate duly filed with and authorized by the ratesetting agency.
Further, the PSC, in fact, established the reasonableness of the total rate despite its disclaimer with respect to DOCS’s commission. In reviewing and approving just that portion of the rate to be retained by MCI, the PSC considered the rates charged by AT&T for non-inmate station-to-station collect calls. The evidence showed that the total cost of a 10-minute inmate collect call (including the commission) was $4.60 ($3 surcharge plus 16 cents per minute), which was significantly less than the $5.25 that AT&T charged for a 10-minute station-to-station collect call outside the prison context ($2.25 surcharge plus 30 cents per minute). As one of the amici points out, there are good reasons to encourage inmates to maintain their ties to family and the community, and an economical inmate call rate makes this easier. But an inmate call rate is not unreasonable just because it is not as low as it might be.
The dissent appears troubled by the notion that the filed rate doctrine might mandate dismissal of what remains of this lawsuit—a claim for refunds of the commissions (the allegedly excessive portion of the rate) from October 30, 2003 onward. I am hardly the first judge to understand the filed rate doctrine to preclude claims against state-operated prisons or telephone companies arising from the rates charged for inmate collect *497calls (see e.g. Valdez v State, 132 NM 667, 671, 54 P3d 71, 75 [Sup Ct 2002] [filed rate doctrine barred claims for damages, restitution, or imposition of constructive trust on account of commissions on inmate collect calls where regulatory agency had “exempted inmate telephone services from several of its regulations and (had) authorized the rates at issue”]; see also Severin, Is There a Winning Argument Against Excessive Rates for Collect Calls from Prisoners ?, 25 Cardozo L Rev 1469, 1483-1490 [2004] [discussing cases where filed rate doctrine prevented litigants from successfully challenging prison phone rates that include commissions]).
And to be clear, I am not somehow taking the position that “a rate . . . placed in a regulatory agency’s file [is] unchallengeable, whether the agency has authority to regulate that rate or not” (dissenting op at 498). I am simply saying that petitioners were required to raise their constitutional and any other objections to the inmate collect call rate in a CPLR article 78 proceeding brought against the PSC to challenge its October 30, 2003 order. If successful, they would have been entitled to prospective relief only (see Matter of Burke v New York State Pub. Serv. Commn., 47 AD2d 91, 95-96 [3d Dept 1975], affd 39 NY2d 766 [1976]; Matter of Long Is. Light. Co. v Public Serv. Commn. of State of N.Y., 80 AD2d 977, 978 [3d Dept 1981], Iv denied 54 NY2d 601 [1981]).2 Once petitioners chose not to contest the PSC’s October 30, 2003 order, the filed rate doctrine kicked in to bar them from launching this collateral attack on the rate.

. The dissent suggests that the PSC did not act within its “jurisdiction” as required by the filed rate doctrine because it did not have the “power to decide” whether DOCS’s commission was reasonable or lawful (dissenting op at 498). But whether or not the PSC possessed this particular “power to decide” makes no difference: the PSC clearly acted within its jurisdiction to approve telephone tariffs—which is to say it acted within its jurisdiction for purposes of the filed rate doctrine—when it ordered MCI to file the total rate.

. Petitioners participated extensively in the administrative proceedings before the PSC, which culminated in the October 30, 2003 order (see In re MCI WorldCom Communications, case 03-C-1058, 2003 WL 22495521, 2003 NY PUC LEXIS 616 [Oct. 30, 2003]). They raised the same constitutional objections to MCI’s proposed revised tariff as they press in this lawsuit against DOCS (2003 WL 22495521, at *4-5, 2003 NY PUC LEXIS 616, at *12-15; cf. Feigley v Pennsylvania Pub. Util. Commn., 794 A2d 428 [Pa Commw Ct 2002] [affirming Public Utility Commission’s disposition of administrative complaint brought by inmate’s wife and a citizen’s group alleging that inmate collect call rates violated federal constitutional free speech rights and equal protection guarantee]). The PSC declined to address petitioners’ constitutional objections, but this only gave them an additional argument on appeal; it did not somehow supply a ground for petitioners to contest the rate in a lawsuit against DOCS rather than the PSC.