confiscatory rates
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 270 U.S. 587 - Smith v. Illinois Bell Telephone Co. · 1926Most cited · 407 citing opinions
taking by delay
Property may be as effectively taken by long-continued and unreasonable delay in putting an end to confiscatory rates as by an express affirmance of them; and where, in that respect, such a state of facts is disclosed as we have here, the injured public service company is not required indefinitely to await a decision of the rate-making tribunal before applying to a federal court for equitable relief.
How often courts cite the cases defining “confiscatory rates”
Court decisions citing the 2 opinions that defined “confiscatory rates” — 658 in all, by decade. Counts are citations to the defining cases as a whole, not verified uses of the term. The dip in the most recent years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the latest years.
All 2 definitions, chronological · 1926–1926
The just compensation safeguarded to the utility by the Fourteenth Amendment is a reasonable return on the value of the property used at the time that it is being used for the public service, and rates not sufficient to yield that return are confiscatory.