U.S. Supreme Court NORTHWESTERN BELL TELEPHONE CO. v. NEBRASKA STATE RY. COMMISSION, 297 U.S. 471 (1936)

[Page 297 U.S. 471, 480]

Commerce Commission was concerned, to use their own depreciation rates for purposes of the required accounting, until the commission performed the duty to establish rates, imposed upon it by Congress.

In any event, we think that section 20(5) cannot be read as authorizing the Interstate Commerce Commission to supplant state power to regulate depreciation rates of telephone companies except by prescribing a rate administratively determined by the commission itself. A direction that the commission, as soon as practicable, prescribe depreciation rates, is hardly to be read as authority to permit the telephone companies to fix the rates for themselves in defiance of state power. The doubtful constitutionality of the statute, if so construed, precludes our acceptance of such a construction.

The commission has thus prescribed no depreciation rates as required by section 20(5). No exertion of federal authority, through the Interstate Commerce Act, 20(5-7), 49 U.S.C.A. 20(5-7) the orders of the commission, or otherwise, forbids the making of entries in appellant's accounts or the doing of anything that is by the state commission's order directed to be done. Pending action by the Communications Commission e tablishing depreciation rates for telephone companies, state control over such rates remains unimpaired. We are not called upon now to consider the effect upon state power of such rates when adopted, or, in view of the state of the record, to consider other objections to the order of the State Commission fixing for appellant a composite depreciation rate of 3 1/2 per cent.

Affirmed.