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Freedom From Debt Coalition, et al vs ERC, MERALCO [DECISION]

FREEDOM FROM DEBT COALITION, ANA MARIA NEMENZO, as President of: FREEDOM FROM DEBT COALITION, MA. TERESA I. DIOKNO-PASCUAL, REP. LORETTA ANN ROSALES (Party-List Akbayan), REP JOSE VIRGILIO BAUTISTA (Party-List Sanlakas), REP.RENATO MAGTUBO (Party-List Partido Manggagawa), Petitioners, versus ENERGY REGULATORY COMMISSION, MANILA ELECTRIC COMPANY (MERALCO), Respondents.

G.R. No. 161113 | 2004-06-15

D E C I S I O N
 
TINGA, J.:
 
The privately-owned public utility “is the substitute for the State in the performance of . . . (a) public service, thus becoming a public servant,”[1] so wrote Justice Louis Brandeis more than eighty years ago. As in the United States, the provision of public utility services in the Philippine setting is a combination of private ownership and public control. Such an amalgam of clashing interests is a formula for inevitable conflicts. At bar here is one such conflict, in fact the current high point of a raging controversy where the public, on one side, is pitted against the regulatory...