The Second Appellate District reversed a judgment. In the published portion of its opinion, the court held in a contract dispute between several California investor-owned utilities and an Arizona electrical utility that failure of the California utilities to challenge the Arizona utility’s jurisdictional status in a prior agency proceeding did not warrant a conclusion that they had failed to exhaust their administrative remedies.
Pacific Gas & Electric Company, Southern California Edison Company, and San Diego Gas & Electric Company were investor-owned utilities (collectively, IOUs) that bought electricity from Arizona Electric Power Cooperative, Inc. (Arizona) during California’s energy crisis in 2000-01. In 2000, the IOUs initiated a proceeding before the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission (FERC), which regulated transmission and sale of electricity for resale in interstate commerce.
