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Show Mlltt GREAT POWER OF PUBLIC UTILITY Our supreme court, in declaring no power or light contract made with the Utah Power and Light company is binding and the public utilities commission, under the law creating the commission, has power to abrogate any contract ' simply on its dictum, brings under serious consideration the question ; as to whether the powers of the commission should be restricted by legislation or a new commission named. Contracts should be held sacred and made unalterable even by a public utilities board unless there been preponderance of evidence to prove the contracts are destructive destruc-tive and against the general wel-ware wel-ware of society, or there has been fraud and collusion between the contracting parties. It would be better to have a limited lim-ited element of favoritism operate as between a contracting party and a public utility, than to break down the sacredness of contract in an effort to set aside that favoritism. favor-itism. But, above all, there is too much power placed in the hands of three men, with majority decisions invariably in-variably on the side of monoply, vvhen they as a board arbitrarily can upset contracts and offer no more specific excuse or justification justifica-tion than the indefinite and unsupported un-supported statement that it is for the public good. This decision is interesting for the further reason that the appeal was prosecuted by the hotel company com-pany on the ground that the contract con-tract between it and the power company came within the saving clause contained in the public utilities util-ities act which provides that nothing noth-ing in the act "shall prevent the carrying out of contracts for public utility service heretoiore made lounciea upon adequate consideration and lawful when made. " It was expressly stipulated in the record before the commission that the Hotel Utah contract was made before the effective date of the utilities act and that a good and valuable consideration was given on each side for the contract, con-tract, and that the rates specified in the agreement were a part of the consideration There was no showing that this consideration was not adequate when made and there was no claim that the contract con-tract wras unlawful when made All this was seemingly brushed aside by a majority of the commission commis-sion a.nd the supreme court likewise like-wise evidently passed lightly over the saving clause of the statute. This is a plain case of judicial legislation. The state legislature in passing the act with the provision pro-vision quoted undoubtedly thought they were saving valid contracts then in force, such as the Hotel Utah and the power company. This purpose is nullified nulli-fied by the action of the two commissioners com-missioners who rendered the opinion and the decision of the supreme su-preme court. |