Background
Clearview Electric, Inc. held a Connecticut electric supplier license issued in 2007. After PURA cited Clearview for marketing and enrollment violations in 2021, Clearview entered a settlement agreement requiring it to pay $500,000 and voluntarily withdraw from the Connecticut electric supplier market for six years — but without surrendering its license. Separately, PURA had opened a billing-format redesign docket in 2014 and in July 2023 issued a final cost-allocation decision ordering Clearview to pay $178,832.11 toward the redesign.
Two days after the allocation decision, Clearview filed a motion to withdraw its electric supplier license, asserting it had no outstanding obligations. PURA denied the motion without prejudice and directed Clearview to first pay the assessment. Clearview filed an administrative appeal in the Superior Court, arguing the denial was an appealable agency action. The trial court (Budzik, J.) dismissed for lack of subject matter jurisdiction, concluding that PURA’s ruling was not a “final decision in a contested case” under the Uniform Administrative Procedure Act (UAPA), and declined to treat the appeal as a declaratory judgment action. This appeal to the Supreme Court followed.
The case turned on whether any state statute required PURA to afford Clearview an opportunity for a hearing before ruling on its motion to withdraw its license — the threshold requirement for “contested case” status under General Statutes § 4-166(4) and, thus, for appellate jurisdiction under § 4-183(a).
The Court’s Holding
The Supreme Court affirmed the dismissal. On Clearview’s first claim — that PURA’s ruling constituted a declaratory ruling appealable under § 4-176(h) — the court held the argument was waived. Clearview had expressly pleaded in the Superior Court that PURA had not issued a declaratory ruling and grounded its appeal on that premise. Having induced the trial court to proceed on that theory, Clearview could not reverse course on appeal and argue the opposite.
On the contested-case claim, the court rejected each statutory hook Clearview invoked. Section 16-245(f), which requires a public hearing on a license application, does not extend to a motion to withdraw a license; the fact that Clearview filed its motion under the same docket number as its original license application was insufficient, without more, to confer contested-case status. Sections 16-41 and 16-245(k), which mandate a contested-case hearing before PURA may impose civil penalties or revoke a license, were inapplicable because the 2021 settlement agreement required only market withdrawal — not license revocation — leaving Clearview’s license intact and permitting reentry after six years.
Finally, the court rejected the argument that PURA’s direction to pay the $178,832.11 assessment as a condition of license relinquishment operated as a civil penalty triggering § 16-41 hearing rights. PURA imposed no new obligation; the assessment had already been ordered in the allocation decision, which Clearview never challenged. The court distinguished any future § 16-41 proceeding for failure to pay that assessment — which would carry hearing rights — from the separate motion to withdraw the license.
Key Takeaways
- A statutory right to a hearing on a license application does not automatically attach to subsequent proceedings filed under the same docket number; contested-case status requires an independent statutory mandate for a hearing on the specific type of proceeding at issue.
- A settlement agreement requiring a supplier to cease serving customers is legally distinct from a license revocation: the supplier retains its license and the hearing protections of §§ 16-41 and 16-245(k) do not apply absent actual revocation or suspension proceedings.
- A party that expressly argues in the trial court that an agency did not issue a declaratory ruling waives any appellate claim that the agency did issue one; invited or induced error is unreviewable.
- Pre-existing cost allocations that a regulated entity never challenged cannot be recast as civil penalties by the entity’s later attempt to condition its license withdrawal on avoiding payment.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces that judicial review of Connecticut administrative agency decisions depends entirely on the legislature’s decision to afford hearing rights in a particular type of proceeding. Regulated entities — particularly those operating under settlement agreements — cannot bootstrap contested-case status by filing follow-on motions in an existing docket or by characterizing cost allocations as penalties. Practitioners advising clients in utility regulatory matters should carefully examine whether each specific agency action, not just the broader licensing relationship, is independently supported by a statutory hearing right before filing an administrative appeal.
The waiver holding is equally significant for litigants in agency proceedings: a party that takes a clear position on a jurisdictional fact before the trial court — here, that no declaratory ruling was issued — will be held to that position on appeal, even where the alternative theory might have provided a viable path to judicial review.