Meridian Light & Ry. Co. v. Steele

• Decision Date: 12 January 1920
• Docket Number: 20864
• Citation: 121 Miss. 114,83 So. 414
• Parties: MERIDIAN LIGHT & RY. CO. v. STEELE
• Court: Mississippi Supreme Court

83 So. 414

121 Miss. 114

MERIDIAN LIGHT & RY. CO. v. STEELE

No. 20864

Supreme Court of Mississippi

January 12, 1920

October 1919

1 ELECTRICITY. Contract for payment of arrearages. Void.

A provision in a contract between an electric light company and a customer by which the customer is required to pay before installation of service, a previously contracted bill for services at another location, is without consideration and void.

2 ELECTRICITY. Electric light company liable for damages for delay in furnishing service.

An electric light company is liable for actual damages for its delay in furnishing service to a customer because the customer refused to pay for arrearage on account of service at a former residence.

HON. R W. HEIDELBERG, Judge.

APPEAL from the circuit court of Lauderdale county, HON. R. W. HEIDELBERG, Judge.

Suit by Gertrude Steele against the Meridian Light & R. R. Co. From a judgment for plaintiff, defendant appeals.

The facts are fully stated in the opinion of the court.

Reversed and remanded.

Baskin & Wilbourn, for appellant.

This case resolves itself simply into a proposition which we think may fairly be stated as follows: Miss Steele applied for service and made a deposit on May 6, 1918. The company found a balance against her on its books for past due service amounting to six dollars and twenty-eight cents and politely desired and requested that this be adjusted before the application for service was granted and the connection actually made.

Miss Steele did not think she owed the amount and asked for a statement and begun to look up her checks and receipts. Reading the discussion over the liability of the account the expected guest, for whose benefit the lights were desired, gave notice of the exact time of his arrival. Miss Steele's attorney requested the appellant to cut in the light and let the matter of the account be adjusted afterwards. To this the appellant assented and cut in the lights in time for the guest, and appellee has had the benefit of the lights ever since, and has not paid the said balance.

She had been without the lights from voluntary choice for a number of months, and got the lights in time for the special purpose for which they were ordered, and such loss of time as she endured in looking up the accounts was all due to the company's presentation of the bill against her for six dollars and twenty-eight cents and was only such time as she would have spent in looking the matter up had there been no question whatever between her and the appellant as to the cutting in of the lights.

The bill was presented in good faith, and under the honest belief that Miss. Steele owed it; and if the Company is to be penalized with punitive damages or mulcted for any kind of damages because it had the temerity to make polite request for the payment of a bill, then it seems to us there is something vitally wrong in our condition of life. We do not believe that any court on earth ever has or ever will hold that a party who presents an account which he thinks another one owes him, but which in point of fact the other may not have owed him, or may dispute, is liable for damages for the loss of time that the party against whom the account has been presented has sustained in looking up the receipts and checking the account and investigating the question of liability. Nor does it seem to us to comport with justice, nor be in the interest of public policy to permit a recovery for the worry that one gives oneself over the fact that another has in good faith presented for payment an account which the party thinks is not due. A great many of our worries are self imposed. Whether or not one worries over a thing is largely dependent upon oneself.

It does seem to us that a public service corporation has the right to demand payment of an account that it honestly believes is due it, as in this case, and that a sound public policy should protect them in that right. Their property is impressed with a public service. The courts have declared that they are entitled to a fair return on the investment. The result is that performance of the public service must result in enough remuneration to give a fair return upon the investment.

If the company cannot collect its bills because intimidated, and handicapped by the risk of liability to those who may be worried by the presentation of a bill they do not think they owe, then the general public is damaged by the increased loss in accounts because the public is called on under the law for enough revenues to meet the increased cost and expense of rendering the public service.

Under all the circumstances, we submit, therefore, that the appellant at least had the right to hold up cutting in of the lights until it could have some reasonable understanding about the past due account, and that as soon as the attorney for the appellee made the request that the lights should be cut in for the particular guest, and stated that the matter of the account could be adjusted afterwards, the appellant did cut in the lights. What we have said has been without reference to the terms of the application for the service.

We now desire to call the attention of the court sharply to the agreement contained in the application for the service, and to submit to the court that on the facts that we have heretofore stated, and upon the terms of the agreement, the appellant was within its rights in the premises and violated no right of the appellee, and is not liable to the appellee in any manner, because of what it did in the instant case.

The particular provision in the application for the service to which we refer is as follows: "I further agree that if I am in arrears with the company for gas or electric service furnished or for pipes, wiring or appliances furnished at the above designated place, or at any other place, or if any member of my household is in arrears, which arrearage accrued while he was such a member of my household, the company shall render me a bill for such arrearage, and if I fail or refuse to pay same on demand; or if I should fail or refuse to comply with any of the foregoing conditions, then the company may remove the meter, sever all connections, either gas or electric, and discontinue the service."

The foregoing agreement was made beyond dispute. The parties are sui juris and the contract is not against public policy; is reasonable and in furtherance of the soundest public policy. Common sense and fair dealing between man and man and the very spirit of the agreement itself, which we have quoted, we submit, made it proper and incumbent upon the appellant to raise the question of the arrearage before cutting in the service.

We would like for the court to pass upon the rights of the appellant under this contract as applied to the facts of this case, because if this particular application for service furnishes no protection in this kind of case to the appellant, and is not reasonable, then the appellant would wish to abandon the use of such application.

If the particular application in question is a valid one, and is reasonable, and lawful, it would be to the interest of the appellant and its customers to have this judicially determined. It is equally important that its invalidity should be judicially declared if it is invalid.

The question is squarely raised by refusal of the court below to grant the appellant instruction No. 7 on page 124 of the record, which we quote, s follows: "The court instructs the jury for the defendant, the Meridian Light & Railway Company, that under the law and the facts in this case, the defendant had the right to decline to cut in the lights upon the application of Miss Gertrude Steele at 1627 Fifteenth Street until Miss Steele should have paid any amount that she was justly due said company, and in arrears with said company, for gas or electric service furnished to her at her address at 14th Street, and if the jury believe from all of the evidence in the case that the defendant, in good faith believed that the said Miss Gertrude Steele was indebted to it for service previously rendered at the address on 14th Street and in good faith declined to cut in the service at first until said balance was adjusted, and that pending the discussion of this matter on request of the attorney for the plaintiff, the Meridian Light & Railway Company, without waiting for actual payment or actual adjustment of the balance claimed cut the lights in, leaving the matter of the disputed bill to be adjusted later, and that the plaintiff was, in point of fact, actually indebted to the defendant in some amount, which was unpaid at the time of her application, then the jury should return a verdict for the defendant. It further raised by the court's instruction No. 1. granted for the appellee, page 108 of record: "The court instructs the jury for the plaintiff that although they may believe from the evidence that the plaintiff (Miss Steele) did owe the defendant a previous balance on another and different contract at another and different house, yet the defendant had no right, after accepting the deposit and agreeing to turn on the electric lights, to unreasonably delay the installation of electrical service; and if you believe from a preponderance of the evidence that the defendant willfully and with a wanton disregard for the rights of this plaintiff, and for the deliberate purpose of coercing payment of an old account that was in dispute, refused to furnish to her electrical service, than you will find for the plaintiff and may assess the defendant with such sum as may seem to you sufficient, taking into consideration the wealth of the defendant, the wrong done and all the other facts in evidence, but in no case to exceed the amount...