Pay Up or Shut Off

The Supreme Court delivered bad tidings last week to people who have not paid their gas, telephone or electric bills. Speaking for a 6-to-3 majority, Justice William Rehnquist said that even though a private utility is a state-regulated monopoly and provides an essential service, it has no constitutional obligation to give customers a hearing before cutting off service.

Mrs. Catherine Jackson, a York, Pa., welfare mother, had her electric power switched off without a hearing in October 1971. The Metropolitan Edison Co. had discontinued Mrs. Jackson's service once before when she failed to pay her bill but later restored it under a new account in the name of another occupant of the Jackson household. When new bills totaling $30 went unpaid, the utility again turned off the electricity. Mrs. Jackson went to court, seeking damages and an injunction calling for renewed service. To cut off her power without first giving her a hearing, Mrs. Jackson's lawyers argued, would deprive her of "life, liberty or property without due process of law." The district court dismissed the claim, the court of appeals affirmed, and last week the Supreme Court agreed.

In a dissenting opinion, Justice Thurgood Marshall saw the High Court's ruling as "a major step in repudiating" a line of past decisions granting constitutional protections to persons dealing with state-regulated monopolies. The court's stance, wrote Marshall, "is bound to lead to mischief."

For most people, the decision is little more than a distant early warning. But it is a warning that should be heeded by utilities as well as their customers. Loss of electricity without notice can be annoying; it can also be lethal. On Christmas Eve 1973, Frank Baker, 93, and his wife Catherine, 92, were found huddled together on the floor of their ramshackle Schenectady, N.Y., home, frozen to death. Cause: without a hearing, the power company had cut off their heat for nonpayment of a $200 bill.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.