Court Opinion

ID: 9796750
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-31 04:04:10.2287+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T08:51:26.527761
License: Public Domain

KENNEDY, Judge (concurring in part and dissenting in part). {56} PNM owns generating plants in the course of its sale of electricity on wholesale and retail markets. Since the only question is “what is activity conducted in the ordinary course of business,” I must depart from the majority’s excluding this bit of business for no reason but that PNM has never done this sort of deal before. Therefore, I respectfully dissent on this issue. {57} I believe the Champion/Tipperary/Kewanee cases leave room for businesses to include new entrepreneurial avenues and innovation in their ordinary course of business. Indeed, the present case arose from PNM responding to a changing regulatory environment. Change and adaptation are inherent components of the ordinary course of business. Looking at any of the three views in Champion: routine practice of engaging in collateral business for profit (Sutin, J.); the nature of the transaction viewed in context with business practice (Wood, C.J.); or the independence of the new enterprise from a unitary view of business practice (Lopez, J.), there is room for PNM to expand its generating capacity as a matter of “ordinary course,” even though its business model for this project differs from, say, their four corners or Palo Verde partnerships. Tipperary is in accord with this view. Excluding “new” from “ordinary” is a view of business practice with which I cannot agree. I concur as to the other issues.