PUBLIC UTILITIES - FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION- JUST AND REASONABLE RATE - RATE BASE - GOING VALUE - ORIGINAL INVESTMENT AS AMORTIZATION BASE

Authors

Michigan Law Review, University of Michigan Law School

Abstract

Smyth v. Ames, source of the elusive principle that has pestered courts and public utility commissions since 1898, is still not a dead letter. Doubtless the only reason its doctrine stands at this late date is that no recent case has forced the Court to reconsider the "fair value" rule. However, in Federal Power Commission v. Natural Gas Pipeline Company of America, decided by the Court on March 16, 1942, three justices took occasion to "lay the ghost" of the 1898 decision once and for all and to declare that the case "erases much which has been written in rate cases during the last half century."

Recommended Citation

Michigan Law Review, PUBLIC UTILITIES - FEDERAL POWER COMMISSION- JUST AND REASONABLE RATE - RATE BASE - GOING VALUE - ORIGINAL INVESTMENT AS AMORTIZATION BASE, 40 Mich. L. Rev. 1077 (1942).
Available at: https://repository.law.umich.edu/mlr/vol40/iss7/6