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Home > Journals > Michigan Law Review > MLR > Volume 35 > Issue 6 (1937)

 

Abstract

Suits were instituted by respondents, non-registered holding companies, in the District Court for the District of Columbia to enjoin the enforcement against them of the Public Utility Holding Company Act of 1935 on the ground that it was unconstitutional. On the same day that the first of these bills was filed, the Securities and Exchange Commission began suit in a federal district court in New York to compel the Electric Bond & Share Company and others, members of another utility system, to register as required by the act. A cross-bill in that action contested the validity of the act and prayed for injunction against its enforcement. The defendants in the present suit, though they had not yet answered, moved for a stay in the proceedings until the validity of the act should be determined by the Supreme Court in the other suit. This motion was accompanied by a pledge not to enforce the act against respondents till such determination. The district court granted the motion, but the Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia reversed the order and remanded the cause. In order to guide the district court in its reconsideration of the motion the Supreme Court granted certiorari. Held, that the court had power to stay the proceedings in this case, but had exceeded its discretion in so far as the stay was to continue till the determination by the Supreme Court of any appeal from the "test. suit" and that at the most it should continue till the first decision in that suit. Landis v. North American Co., 299 U.S. 248, 57 S. Ct. 163 (1936).

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