Springfield Gas Electric Co v. City of Springfield
| Decision Date | 07 November 1921 |
| Docket Number | No. 46,46 |
| Parties | SPRINGFIELD GAS & ELECTRIC CO. v. CITY OF SPRINGFIELD |
| Court | U.S. Supreme Court |
Messrs. Philip Barton Warren, of Springfield, Ill., Joseph S. Clark, of Philadelphia, Pa., and William L. Patton, of Springfield, Ill., for plaintiff in error.
[Argument of Counsel from pages 67-68 intentionally omitted] Messrs. Bayard Lacey Catron and A. D. Stevens, both of Springfield, Ill., for defendant in error.
This is a bill in equity brought by the plaintiff in error, a private gas and electric company, to restrain the defendant City from producing and selling electricity to private consumers without first filing schedules of rates and printing and posting the same as required by sections 33, 34 of the Public Utilities Act of June 30, 1913 (Laws 1913, pp. 476, 477). The bill was dismissed on demurrer by the Court of first instance. An appeal was taken to the Supreme Court where the decree was affirmed on rehearing, after a previous decision the other way. The public Utilities Act and the Municipal Ownership Act were enacted by the State of Illinois within a few days of each other and, according to the Supreme Court of the State, as parts of a single plan. The former excepts municipal corporations from its requirements and the latter allows cities to go into this business among others and to fix the rates, which in the plaintiff's case are subject to the approval of the State Public Utilities Commission. The plaintiff contends that the exception of municipal corporations from the Public Utilities Act is void under the Fourteenth Amendment and that the Act should be enforced as if the exception were not there.
It might perhaps be a sufficient answer to the plaintiff's case that the Supreme Court has intimated after careful consideration that the Utilities Act must stand or fall as a whole, so that if the plaintiff's attack upon the exception were sustained the whole statute would be inoperative and the only ground of the suit would fail. The plaintiff attempts to reargue the question, but upon this point the decision of the State Court would be final and would control. However, as the Supreme Court did not stop at that point, but, assuming that under the law of Illinois the plaintiff had a standing to demand the relief sought if its case was otherwise good went on to decide the validity of the exception, we think it proper to follow the same course and to deal with the constitutional question raised.
The plaintiff's argument shortly stated is that in selling electricity the city stands like any other party engaged in a commercial enterprise and that to leave it free in the matter of charges while the plaintiff is subject to the Public Utilities Board is to deny to the plaintiff the equal protection of the laws. But we...
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