Owen J. Roberts

“ The Tennessee Valley Authority Act [1] erects a corporation, an instrumentality of the United States, to develop by a series of dams on the Tennessee River and its tributaries a system of navigation and flood control and to sell the power created by the dams. ”

“ But the competition of a privately owned company authorized by the state to enter the territory served by one of the appellants would, in the same sense, constitute a regulation of rates. The contention amounts to saying that competition by an individual or a state corporation is not regulation but competition by a federal agency is. In contracting with municipalities and nonprofit corporations the Authority has stipulated respecting the price at which the energy supplied shall be resold by its vendees. ”

“ Cooperation by two federal officials, one acting under a statute whereby funds are provided for the erection of municipal plants, and the other under a statute authorizing the production of electricity and its sale to such plants, in competition with the appellants, does not spell conspiracy to injure their business. ”

“ Eighteen corporations which generate and distribute electricity in Tennessee, Kentucky, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, West Virginia, Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina, and one which transmits electricity in Tennessee and Alabama, filed a bill in equity, in the Chancery Court of Knox County, Tennessee, against the Authority and its three executive officers and directors. The prayers were that the defendants be restrained from generating electricity out of water power created, or to be created, pursuant to the Act and the Authority's plan of construction and operation ”

“ They affirm that the statutory plan is a plain attempt, in the guise of exerting granted powers, to exercise a power not granted to the United States, namely, the generation and sale of electric energy ”

“ They classify the franchises in question as of two sorts,-those involved in the state's grant of incorporation or of domestication and those arising from the grant by the state or its subdivisions of the privilege to use and occupy public property and public places for the service of the public. ”

“ While the Authority has not built or authorized any transmission line, has not sold or authorized the sale of electricity, or contracted for, or authorized any contract for, the sale of electricity by others, in territory served by nine of the appellants, it has done some or all of these things in areas served or susceptible of service by five of the companies ”