Kings County Lighting Co. v. Newton

Headnote

Constitutional law — gas and electricity — New York city — constitutionality of statute reducing price to be charged for gas in the city of New York.

Kings Co. Lighting Co. v. Newton, 202 A.pp. Div. 473, affirmed.

Appeal from a judgment, entered August 10, 1922, upon an order of the Appellate Division of the Supreme Court in the first judicial department reversing a judg

ment' in favor of defendants entered upon a dismissal of the complaint by the court on trial at Special Term and directing judgment in favor of plaintiff. The action was to restrain the enforcement of and have declared unconstitutional and void chapter 604 of the Laws of 1916, which amended chapter 125 of the Laws of 1906 and reduced the price which the plaintiff could charge its customers in the territory served by it from one dollar to eighty cents per 1,000 cubic feet after July 1,1916. The Appellate Division held that said statute, in so far as it limited or limits the rate to be charged for gas supplied by plaintiff in the territory served by it, was,from the date of its enactment and continues to be, confiscatory and its enforcement would deprive plaintiff of its property without due process of law, contrary to the Fourteenth Amendment "to the Constitution of the United States and section 6, article 1 of the Constitution of the State of New York.