Hurt v. Bedinger

How courts have described this case

Verbatim parenthetical descriptions written by other courts when citing this decision. Ranked by citation-network relevance.

• holding the filed-rate doctrine applicable in cases where the rate at issue was set by a state rate-making agency if the legislature endowed the agency with the power to determine the reasonableness of rates
• explaining that application of the filed rate doctrine forecloses “strike suits that would be brought as eager lawyers, using the class action vehicle, circumvent the states’ rate-making mechanisms — all at the expense of the consumers”
• applying filed rate doctrine to bar claims based on tariff approved by Alabama and Georgia agencies
• “Where the legislature has conferred power upon an administrative agency to determine the reasonableness of a rate, the rate-payer can claim no rate as a legal right that is other than the filed rate[.]”
• “Given that the [regulatory agency is] equipped to take the defendants’ fraud into account in setting future rates, a court’s award of damages against a utility for ‘fraudulent rate-making’ would be unnecessarily disruptive to the state’s scheme of utility regulation.”
• “It is true that, under Alabama law, a PSC cannot declare retrospectively that a rate it previously approved was unreasonable, and therefore, unlawful. Also, even if the PSC or a court declares that a previously approved rate was excessive, it may not refund the excess to consumers.”

Source: CourtListener parenthetical corpus (CC0).