321 Mass. 259 | Mass. | 1947
J. This is a bill in equity brought under G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 25, § 5, by a gas company, herein called the company, engaged as a public utility in the sale of gas, to have annulled certain rulings of the department. of public utilities and an order of that department requiring the company to file with the department a rate schedule, to be effective August 1, 1946, setting forth a fuel charge “to which reference' and application may be made by various other schedules” and which should expressly provide, in substance, that the fuel charge should increase the price of gas to customers of the company only as the price of gas purchased by the company under a certain contract with Eastern Gas and Fuel Associates, hereinafter called Eastern, should be correspondingly increased by the application of a similar fuel charge in that contract.
It will be necessary to state in brief outline the history of this fuel charge as it appears from the documentary evidence of proceedings before the department. On April 24, 1942, the company entered into a contract with Eastern for the purchase of gas by the company up to the amount of its daily requirements. In this contract was included a fuel charge which, as later amended at the instance of the department, provided, so far as here material, for an addi
The company duly filed schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 100,” containing the fuel charge exactly as prescribed by the department. This went into effect July 1, 1942. After that date the company applied the 'fuel charge to gas sold by it. Eastern, however, did not apply the fuel charge in its contract with the company to purchases of gas by the company from it; and the company, although it received the benefit of the fuel charge of schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 100” in its dealings with its customers, did not pay a corresponding increase in the price of gas purchased by it. This, as stated in the bill and admitted by the answer, was “because the collection and payment of the fuel charge [in the contract between Eastern and the company] was forbidden by the regulations of the Office of Price Administration of the United States under the emergency price control act of 1942.” 56 U. S. Sts. at Large, c. 26.
.. On,-March. 15,. 1946, twenty or more customers of the company filed a petition with the department, which as amended alleged, among other things, that the order of the ■ department of June 30, 1942, increasing the rates to customers by adding the fuel charge required to be filed in schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 100” was based upon the premise that the company should be allowed- to transmit to its customers increases in the price of gas purchased by the company under its contract with Eastern, and that in fact -there had been no such increases. The petition prayed that the order of June. 30, 1942, be revoked, and that the company be required to account for all moneys received from its customers as a fuel charge and.- to refund such moneys to its customers. The department on April 25, 1946, also instituted an investigation on its own motion under G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 164, § 93, of the price of gas sold
In its,, opinion, dated July 24,-1-946, the department-attempted to construe its former order of June/30, .1942, wherein it had - directed the company to file schedule “M. D. P. U. No;.100,” in which the fuel charge was expressed to be based merely upon the price of coal to Eastern, as if it had provided that the fuel charge be based upon the price paid by the company to Eastern for gas, as had been-provided in the fuel charge of the originally proposed schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 99,” which the-department had disallowed. In its 1946 opinion the department reviewed the proceedings. hereinbefore outlined and referred to statements in. the dormer opinion which had accompanied its 1942 order to the effect that it was not unreasonable or unjust that the proposed fuel charge in the contract between Eastern and the company “should in turn be transmitted through the means of an appropriate fuel charge to the Customers” of the company; that “to that end a reasonable fuel charge should be :provided in the schedules of the . . . [company] to recover a fair and equitable portion of the increment cost of coal which may be justly allocated to gas manufactured”; and that “it is recognized that the cost of fuels to the company manufacturing gas [Eastern] has substantially increased during the past six months due to the conditions arising from the war, and that the proposed increase in cost to the- . . . [company] should properly be transmitted to the consumers of gas at the earliest possible date to preserve and maintain the service and efficiency .of :the . . . [company].” The department in its 1946 opinion found and ruled that the collections made by the company from its customers as fuel charges under the allowed schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 100”
The department’s construction of its 1942 order in its 1946 opinion was erroneous in law. The 1942 order establishing the consumers’ fuel charge “M. D. P. U. No. 100” was perfectly plain in the form in which it was adopted June 30, 1942. By its words, when given their commonly accepted meaning, it made the cost of coal to Eastern and not the price of gas to the company the test of the company’s right to a fuel charge against its customers. This was a test perfectly possible of practical application. It might well have been expected at the time to produce in the long run a result substantially the same as-if. the price
■ The many cases cited by the Attorney General in behalf of the defendants holding that related documents must be construed together and that all parts of a statute or of a group of related statutes, or of a contract or a will must be considered on questions of construction are not in- point. His argument fails to give sufficient weight to the special nature of a final order or decree as distinguished from all other matter connected with a proceeding, whether found on the same sheet of paper or elsewhere. And the final and binding nature of the order as determinative of rights as long as it remains in force is in no manner impaired by the fact that rate making is in general considered to be a legislative function delegated to the rate making authority rather than a judicial function. See American Employers’ Ins. Co. v. Commissioner of Insurance, 298 Mass. 161, 169; Arizona Grocery Co. v. Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe Railway, 284 U. S. 370, 386. It is the actual order of the tribunal and not the reason given for it that constitutes the “legislation.” A statute that is not equivocal in its words cannot be interpreted by resort to its legislative history. Allen v. "Commissioner of Corporations & Taxation, 272 Mass. ■502, 508Í D. N. Kelley & Son, Inc. v. Selectmen of Fair-haven, 294 Mass. 570, 576. The fuel charge fixed by the 1942 order could be changed- and amended only by the equivalent of new legislation which must be brought about strictly in accordance with the procedure laid-' down 'in the enabling statute under which the department must act.
This brings us at once to the consideration of another and more comprehensive reason which rendered the order of July 24, 1946, erroneous in law. The order of June 30, 1942, prescribing a fuel charge dependent upon the price of coal to Eastern was the fixing of rates for gas to the consumer under authority of G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 164, § 94, as amended. The rates were those set forth in the approved schedules plus the prescribed fuel charge. See Boston v. Edison Electric Illuminating Co. of Boston, 242 Mass. 305, 309; Grant v. Department of Public Utilities, 279 Mass. 38, 48. Those rates will remain in force until changed in accordance with either c. 164, § 93, or c. 164, § 94, as amended. We .need not consider whether the department had any jurisdiction to enter any new order merely interpreting or clarifying the order of June 30, 1942, or what, if anything, would be accomplished by doing so, since the order of July 24, 1946, although treated by the department as merely a clarifying order, was not such in fact. The order of July 24, 1946, if valid, changed the underlying basis of the fuel charge from the cost of coal to Eastern to the cost of gas to the company. In substance and effect it was- an attempt to fix a new and lower rate for gas to the consumer.
It follows from what has been said that the department’s. finding and ruling that the collections made by the company from its customers as fuel charges under schedule “M. D. P. U. No. 100” were unauthorized and not in conformity with that order were also. erroneous, since it is plain on the documentary proof that they were proper charges under “M. D. P. U. No. 100,”
At the hearing before the single justice of this - court certain evidence, consisting of transcripts of the evidence introduced before the department and exhibits there used, was admitted over the objection of the defendants, and the question of the competency of this evidence is reported. Without implying that any of this evidence was not competent in some aspect of the case, it is enough to say that the errors above mentioned appear as matter of law from the findings and rulings of the department and from documentary evidence the competency of which is not challenged; that we have found no occasion to use the disputed evidence; and that in any event its admission was harmless.
Because the errors of law hereinbefore set forth affect as a whole the order of the department of July 24, 1946, directing the company to file on or before August 1, 1946, “an appropriate schedule” for a fuel charge in the words ■prescribed in said order, a final decree is to be entered in this suit annulling said order. G. L. (Ter. Ed.) c. 25, § 5.
So ordered.
These collections during 1942-1945 were said by the department to amount “by the company’s own estimate” to $1,284,246.
The order of July 24, 1946, would have effected a reduction in the price of gas to the consumer below the price currently being charged by the company under the 1942 fuel charge until such time as O. P. A., regulations should no longer prevent Eastern from applying the fuel charge in its contract with the company. • The O. P. A. regulations affecting the sale of gas by Eastern were not lifted until November 10, 1946. See Supplementary Order No. 193, issued November 12, 1946, included in stipulation of the parties. ■ ■
The department in its findings and rulings was dealing with the right of the company to collect fuel charges in general. There was no issue as to the calculation of particular sums charged.