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Wednesday, February 06, 2008
Courts - "Judges can't take Duke case"
Dan Horn reports today in the Cincinnati Enquirer:
Four federal judges in Cincinnati have bowed out of the antitrust case involving Duke Energy.The chief judge says the problem is that every federal judge in town is a Duke customer, which makes them all potential parties to the class-action lawsuit filed last month against the utility.
The suit accuses the company, which has 680,000 electric customers in southern Ohio, of paying kickbacks to its biggest corporate customers in exchange for their support of a rate increase.
ADVERTISEMENTIt seeks damages on behalf of residential customers.
"I'm a customer, as most of us are who live in this area," U.S. District Judge Sandra Beckwith, chief judge for the southern district of Ohio, said. "No one around here could ethically handle the case."
The case has been reassigned three times since it first went to Judge Herman Weber on Jan. 16. Judges Michael Barrett, Susan Dlott and, finally, Beckwith subsequently recused themselves from the case.
Beckwith said all of the judges are customers of Duke and, therefore, have a conflict of interest. Dlott also is married to Stan Chesley, one of the lawyers who filed the lawsuit.
Beckwith sent the case to Columbus this week hoping to find a judge there who doesn't buy gas and electric service from Duke; the company does not serve the Columbus area.
If that fails, Beckwith said, she might have to assign the case to a visiting judge from out of state.
The suit claims Duke signed side deals with big commercial and industrial customers in 2004 to secure their support for a rate increase, later approved by Public Utilities Commission of Ohio.
Duke officials say the deals are common in the industry and had no bearing on the rate-increase approval.
Posted by Marcia Oddi on February 6, 2008 12:37 PM
Posted to Courts in general