public utility
Definitions from Case Law · United States Supreme Court
Definitions from Case Law
From 321 U.S. 144 - Davies Warehouse Co. v. Bowles · 1944Most cited · 427 citing opinions
Congress by the term 'public utilities' exempted those whose charges already were regulated as public utilities and hence were not probable sources of inflationary dangers.
How the Supreme Court has restated “public utility”
Each Supreme Court definition of “public utility,” sized by how often later courts cited it. “Change” is measured by wording overlap with earlier definitions — a rough signal, not a semantic judgment.
How often courts cite the cases defining “public utility”
Court decisions citing the 4 opinions that defined “public utility” — 1,037 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 4 definitions, chronological · 1916–1958
- ORIGINAL
No carrier serves all the public. His customers are limited by place, requirements, ability to pay, and other facts. But the public generally is free to go to hotels if it can afford to, as it is free to travel by rail, and through the hotel door to call on the plaintiff for a taxicab. The service affects so considerable a fraction of the public that it is public in the same sense in which any other may be called so. The public does not mean everybody all the time.
carrier
The determinative fact is the ownership of facilities used in transmission. Such use makes the owner or operator of such facilities a public utility under the act.
Federal Power Act
Stockyards and market agencies are made public utilities by the Act. Their duty is to serve all, impartially and without discrimination.
stockyard