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Enron Mail |
Great job. I'll grab you and Susan Mon. AM to discuss this and her
thoughts. DF Kathy Ringblom 11/21/2000 04:55 PM To: Drew Fossum/ET&S/Enron@ENRON cc: Susan Scott/ET&S/Enron@ENRON Subject: Price Gouging Drew, I will try to summarize the research I did today on the referenced subject. The bottom line is that I did not find any California statutes that appeare to be applicable to what we're doing. I looked at California's General Business Regulations, Unfair Trade Practices statute, the Public Utilities Code, an ALR annotation that discussed cases in which courts have reviewed acts or practices prohibited by state deceptive trade practice and consumer protection statutes, and I searched case law and statutes using terms such as gouging, unconscionable, pricing practices, etc. The California Unfair Practices Act is "... not a price-fixing statute, but seeks to regulate conduct of those engaged in business in order to eliminate such unfair practices as price discrimination indulged in for purpose of injuring competitors or destroying competition. It does not make every difference in price unlawful, but only those differences that cannot be justified after proper allowance has been made for differences in grade, quality, quantity or cost of transportation." It appears that the statutes and cases that are anywhere close to what we're looking for deal with protection of the ultimate consumer and not sophisticated energy companies. I did find a price gouging statute in New York that states that its purpose is to prohibit conduct that could occur during periods of abnormal disruption of the market caused by strikes, power failures, severe shortages or other extraordinary adverse circumstances when parties have taken unfair advangage of consumers by charging grossly excessive prices for essential goods and services. I reviewed two cases, People v. Two Wheel Corp. and State of New York v. Strong Oil Company, that deal with a company that sold portable electric generators at unconscionably excessive prices during a power failure caused by a hurricane and a company that sold home heating fuel at an unconscionably excessive price during a period of abnormal disruption of the market, respectively. (The Strong Oil case discussed Federal pre-emption of state law due to the Federal Emergency Petroleum Allocation Act.) I will put copies of these cases as well as some of the other documents mentioned above in your in-box in case you want to review them. I looked briefly at Texas law but didn't see anything. I obviously didn't get every state covered. If you want me to look further, please let me know.
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