Source: Business NC
Duke Energy, one of North Carolina’s- and the nation’s- largest energy supplier, will be back in court after judges reinstated a rival company’s antitrust lawsuit.
Citing the “genuine issues of material fact” at stake between Duke Energy and its rival, NTE Energy, the U.S. Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals unanimously decided NTE’s case should be brought before a jury.
The case revolves around the way Duke handled the Florida-based energy company NTE Energy moving into North Carolina and selling energy to former Duke customers in the 2010s. Though most Duke customers had long-term contracts, the City of Fayetteville had a supply deal that was set to expire in 2024. The city quickly became a battleground for the two energy companies.
Eventually, Duke won the battle for Fayetteville because the multi-billion dollar corporation was able to offer benefits the newcomer NTE could not. Duke offered the city a discount on the remainder of its contract and agreed to pay a premium for excess electricity buys from the city’s Butler-Warner Generation Plant.
There is evidence that Duke was able to give these discounts to the city by charging higher prices than needed to other customers, generating funds that would balance out the loss. Internal documents from Duke made mention of a plan to “raise prices on other of Duke’s wholesale and retail customers to make up for the profit it lost on the Fayetteville deal,” said Judge Paul Niemeyer, who authored the ruling that is putting Duke and FTE in front of a jury.
Duke argues that the actions they took were “lawful in themselves” and therefore cannot amount to an antitrust violation. However, the Judges recognize that a number of legal actions can turn into antitrust violations if it is found to be anticompetitive conduct. The court concluded that there was “much from which a jury could conclude that Duke’s actions were illegitimate anticompetitive conduct.”
