State ex rel. Public Service Commission v. Skagit River Telephone & Telegraph Co.

Citations

• 85 Wash. 29
• 147 P. 885
• 1915 Wash. LEXIS 1252

Syllabus

<p>Eminent Domain — Compensation—Regulation by Public Service Commission. While the public service commission has plenary powers to regulate all public utilities within the state, it has no power, under a pretended public use or a pretended exercise of the police power of the state, to so regulate as to amount to an appropriation of property, without just compensation being first made and paid to the owner.</p> <p>Telegraphs and Telephones — Regulation—Public Service Commission. In a mandamus proceeding by the public service commission to compel certain telephone companies to comply with an order requiring them to make physical connection so as to transmit one another’s messages, the commission cannot urge that one of the companies, which had been dismissed as a party to the proceedings before it, has no right to he heard in the mandamus proceeding because of its failure to cause the proceedings before the public service commission to be reviewed, as required by 3 Rem. & Bal. Code, §§ 8626-86 and 8626-99, which declares conclusive the orders of such commission unless set aside or annulled in proceedings to review the orders; since it had been dismissed and its rights were not affected, and since in such proceedings the commission was acting judicially, and its orders, if not erroneous merely but made without authority and void, would be subject to collateral attack.</p> <p>Telegraphs and Telephones — Public Service Commission — Regularity oe Action — Presumptions. Where it is sought by mandamus to compel compliance with the orders of the public service commission requiring physical connection of two telephone systems and the transmission of messages of one over the lines of the other, the presumption of regularity and validity attaches to the order, and the burden is upon the defendants to show the unreasonableness and lack of necessity of the commission’s order; and hence it was proper to permit defendants to introduce evidence tending to show that the order was co