In re Oncor Elec. Delivery Co.

• Decision Date: 25 June 2021
• Docket Number: No. 19-0662,19-0662
• Citation: 630 S.W.3d 40
• Parties: IN RE ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, Relator
• Court: Texas Supreme Court

630 S.W.3d 40

IN RE ONCOR ELECTRIC DELIVERY COMPANY LLC, Relator

No. 19-0662

Supreme Court of Texas.

Argued October 8, 2020

OPINION DELIVERED: June 25, 2021

Rehearing Denied September 24, 2021

Marnie A. McCormick, Austin, for Amici Curiae El Paso Electric Company, Electric Transmission Texas, LLC, Southwestern Electric Power Company, AEP Texas, Inc., Entergy Texas, Inc.

Andrew James Szygenda, Dallas, John C. Stewart, Robert K. Wise, Dallas, Thomas F. Lillard, Dallas, for Relator.

Bill Davis, Austin, Ari Cuenin, Kyle D. Hawkins, Houston, Ryan Lee Bangert, Jeffrey C. Mateer, Austin, Atty. Gen. W. Kenneth Paxton Jr., Austin, for Amicus Curiae State of Texas.

Sean E. Breen, Austin, Christopher Lavorato, Brian Patrick Lauten, James C. Hatchitt, Austin, for Real Party in Interest.

Kyle D. Hawkins, Houston, Bill Davis, Austin, for Other interested party.

Justice Bland delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice Lehrmann, Justice Devine, Justice Busby, and Justice Huddle joined.

The State regulates public utilities through its right to promote the general health, safety, and welfare of the public.¹ Its regulation acts as a counterweight to public-utility monopolies, ensuring that they charge fair rates and adequately provide vital services.² In contrast, the "fundamental purposes of our tort system are to deter wrongful conduct, shift losses to responsible parties, and fairly compensate deserving victims."³ Regulation is the government's prospective ordering of marketplace conduct; tort lawsuits are retroactive case-by-case correctives.

The question presented in this mandamus action is whether an electric utility may compel a plaintiff who alleges a common law personal injury claim to appear before the Public Utility Commission before appearing in court. We conclude it may not unless the claim complains about the utility's rates or its provision of electrical service. The Public Utility Regulatory Act grants the Commission exclusive jurisdiction to regulate a utility's rates, operations, and services.⁴ The Commission's jurisdiction extends to customer–utility disputes regarding Commission-regulated activity. This personal injury claim against a utility allegedly arising under duties at common law and consumer-protection statutes, however, is not a regulatory action within the Commission's auspices.

The plaintiff in this case alleges well-settled elements of a negligence claim: a duty of care, breach of that duty, causation, and damages. His allegations do not rely on a utility acting in its regulated capacity, nor on a disruption of or failure to provide electrical service. Negligence alleged in a context merely coincidental to utility activities does not create Commission jurisdiction.⁵

The Commission's regulations, like many state regulations, may inform liability and defenses under the common law. Utility regulations have done so for decades. Nothing in the Act suggests, however, that the Legislature moved the adjudication of personal injury cases that do not arise from the failure to provide electrical service before the Commission, absent any issue within the Commission's jurisdiction that it may remedy. The last forty-five years under the Act indicate otherwise. Accordingly, we deny relief.

I

Relator Oncor Electric Delivery Company provides electrical service to a house owned in part by Stacey Taylor in Graham, Texas. Oncor provides service to the house next door via a drop line that crosses Taylor's property. Concerned that trees obstructing the drop line posed a hazard, Taylor requested that Oncor trim the trees or move its line.⁶ Taylor claims Oncor responded that the trees were Taylor's responsibility. Taylor ultimately undertook to trim the trees himself using a boom lift. While trimming them, Taylor alleges that he contacted an overhead high-voltage line and sustained electric shock injuries.

Taylor sued Oncor for negligence and consumer-protection violations, among other claims. Oncor moved for summary judgment, contending that it has no liability to Taylor because he violated Health and Safety Code Chapter 752, which requires those who work near high-voltage power lines to arrange to de-energize the lines before beginning work. While Oncor's summary-judgment motion was pending, it filed a jurisdictional plea, asking the trial court to abate the case to require Taylor "to exhaust his administrative remedies" before the Commission. The trial court denied Oncor's plea. The court of appeals denied Oncor's petition for writ of mandamus, and Oncor sought relief in this Court.

According to Oncor, the Public Utility Commission must decide whether Oncor had a duty to trim the trees or relocate the drop line, because such a decision involves Oncor's operations and services. Taylor responds that common law tort claims for personal injury damages fall outside the Commission's exclusive jurisdiction. He observes that the Act's purpose does not extend so far, and the long-standing exercise of jurisdiction over these claims by Texas courts in the decades since the Act became law confirms that limitation.

II

We grant mandamus relief to correct a trial court's abuse of discretion when an appeal from a final judgment is an inadequate remedy.⁷ In particular, we have granted mandamus relief to halt trial court proceedings that run counter to an administrative agency's exclusive jurisdiction.⁸ Thus, we must decide in this case whether the trial court had jurisdiction to proceed with Taylor's suit or instead should have abated the case to allow the Commission to exercise its jurisdiction in the first instance.

A district court has subject-matter jurisdiction to resolve disputes unless the Legislature divests it of that jurisdiction.⁹ Because we presume that a district court has subject-matter jurisdiction, the burden to demonstrate that exclusive jurisdiction rests with an administrative agency falls on the party resisting the district court's jurisdiction.¹⁰ Agencies do not share the jurisdictional presumption of district courts;¹¹ they exercise only powers conferred in clear and express statutory language.¹²

Interpretation of the Public Utility Regulatory Act's grant of jurisdiction begins, as it must, with the plain meaning of the enacted text considered in light of the statute as a whole.¹³ The Legislature has granted the Commission "the general power to regulate and supervise the business of each public utility."¹⁴ Regarding electric utilities specifically, the Legislature has declared that its purpose "is to establish a comprehensive and adequate regulatory system for electric utilities to assure rates, operations, and services that are just and reasonable to the consumers and to the electric utilities."¹⁵ To achieve this purpose, the Commission has "exclusive original jurisdiction over the rates, operations, and services of an electric utility" in some geographic areas and "exclusive appellate jurisdiction" in others—namely, where municipalities exercise "exclusive original jurisdiction over the rates, operations, and services of an electric utility in areas in the municipality."¹⁶

The parties gloss over the division of jurisdiction between cities and the Commission. Oncor states that "the PUC has the ultimate authority over electric-utility rates, operations, and services and this Brief, for simplicity, will refer only to the PUC's exclusive jurisdiction." Taylor observes that the original 1975 version of the Act refers to the " ‘governing body of each municipality,’ for reasons that are not relevant to the legal issues in this proceeding."

Contrary to the parties’ assertions, the exclusive-jurisdiction connection between the Commission and cities reveals its limited scope. As enacted in 1975, the Act's jurisdictional grant makes plain that the Commission's "exclusive original jurisdiction" has the same regulatory purpose, with the same limits, as the jurisdiction granted to cities. The distinction between the two is merely geographic:

Sec. 17 (a) Subject to the limitations imposed in this Act, and for the purpose of regulating rates and services so that such rates may be fair, just, and reasonable, and the services adequate and efficient, the governing body of each municipality shall have exclusive original jurisdiction over all electric, water, and sewer utility rates, operations, and services provided by an electric, water, and sewer utility within its city or town limits.

(b) At any time after two years have passed from the date this Act becomes effective, a municipality may elect to have the commission exercise exclusive original jurisdiction over electric, water, or sewer utility rates, operations, and services within the incorporated limits of the municipality. ....

(d) The commission shall have exclusive appellate jurisdiction to review orders or ordinances of such municipalities as provided in this Act.

(e) The commission shall have exclusive original jurisdiction over electric, water, and sewer utility rates, operations, and services not within the incorporated limits of a municipality exercising exclusive original jurisdiction over those rates, operations, and services as provided in this Act.¹⁷

Reading Section 17 as enacted, the Legislature's design is clear. Municipalities have original jurisdiction to regulate utilities within their territories and can surrender this authority to the Commission if they choose. The Commission, in contrast, has original jurisdiction in unincorporated areas. Each grant of jurisdiction is similarly limited, however, by the objective the Legislature ascribes to the Act at the beginning: "for the purpose of regulating rates and services so that such rates may be fair, just, and reasonable, and the services adequate and efficient."¹⁸

The putatively non-substantive 1997 codification of the Act sundered and reordered Section 17 into stand-alone sections 32.001 and 33.001 of the Utility Code.¹⁹ Nonetheless, the Legislature's original guiding purpose for granting jurisdiction lives on...