ACP Land, LLC v. The Rhode Island Public Utilities Commission

Syllabus

The petitioners, ACP Land, LLC and Green Development, Inc. d/b/a Wind Energy Development, LLC, filed a statutory petition for the issuance of a writ of certiorari with this Court seeking review of a November 27, 2017 order of the Public Utilities Commission (the PUC). A writ of certiorari was thereafter issued. The PUC order at issue, in relevant part, approved the interconnection tax that National Grid (NG) charged petitioners to interconnect to NG's distribution system and then passed on to the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) as contributions in aid of construction. The petitioners asked this Court to declare the PUC order \illegal and unreasonable\ for purportedly failing to follow a specific IRS Ruling—IRS Notice 2016-36—and failing to hold NG to its burden of proof. The petitioners further argued that the PUC order nullified a settlement in the case. The Supreme Court held that the PUC order was not illegal and unreasonable it concluded that the PUC did not err in concluding that NG was reasonable in believing that it continued to owe the tax at issue to the IRS and was, as such, reasonable in passing that tax on to the petitioners. The Court further held that the PUC order at issue comported with a prior settlement in the case. Accordingly, the Supreme Court affirmed the PUC order.