When attorneys sued Georgia's electric power cooperatives on behalf of millions of current and former power customer members, they claimed the cooperatives, known as electric membership corporations, for decades had withheld as much as $2 billion in profits that should have, by law, been distributed regularly to their members.

The two class action suits were filed the same year that one of the larger cooperatives, Cobb EMC, concluded a six-year legal battle over how it had made use of those profits, known as patronage capital. It agreed to distribute to current and former power co-op members $98 million in excess profits the EMC had withheld virtually since its inception more than 70 years ago. But in late June, the plaintiffs' lawyers threw in the towel, deciding against petitioning the Georgia Supreme Court to review a 75-page state appellate opinion handed down June 9 affirming the suits' dismissal after court-ordered mediation failed.

“We viewed it as a fairly straightforward case. The EMCs were holding money that ultimately belonged to former members but they weren't giving it back,” said Ken Canfield, lead counsel for former EMC members who sued. “We believe that part of the idea of being a cooperative is that once a member leaves the co-op, they have an expectation that they are going to be repaid their share of money that was generated by its operations. What the Court of Appeals has effectively held is that the EMCs can keep that money as long as they want.”