## Facts

- Ohio Bell Telephone Company, an intrastate utility, filed rate schedules after a 1921 reorganization, prompting multiple state proceedings to review exchange and toll rates.
- The Public Utilities Commission of Ohio (PUC) conducted extensive hearings and compiled a full evidentiary record sufficient to determine a 1925 valuation and rate base.
- For later years (1926–1933), the PUC did not reopen the record or take additional evidence on valuation.
- Instead, the PUC applied “price trend percentages” to the 1925 valuation to produce year-by-year valuations for 1926–1933.
- The PUC stated that the trend data were derived from materials such as tax valuations, construction cost indexes, and findings from related proceedings, but it treated the supporting materials as matters of “judicial notice.”
- The PUC did not place the underlying materials in the administrative record and refused to disclose them to Ohio Bell.
- Based on the resulting reduced valuations, the PUC concluded Ohio Bell had earned “excess” returns from 1926–1933 and ordered substantial customer refunds.
- Ohio Bell challenged the order in the Supreme Court of Ohio, which affirmed on the record made before the PUC; Ohio Bell then sought review in the U.S. Supreme Court.

## Issues

1. Whether due process is denied when a utility commission uses undisclosed, extra-record valuation data taken by “judicial notice,” and the affected utility has no opportunity to examine or contest the data used to impose refund liability.
2. Whether “judicial notice” in administrative rate proceedings may be used to establish specific, disputed, outcome-determinative quantitative valuations without disclosure and an opportunity for rebuttal, particularly where judicial review is confined to the agency record.

## Decision

- The U.S. Supreme Court reversed the judgment of the Supreme Court of Ohio and remanded.
- The Court held that the PUC denied due process by valuing the company’s property for 1926–1933 through trend percentages purportedly derived from noticed materials that were withheld from the record and not revealed to the company.
- The Court accepted that general economic conditions may be noticed, but rejected using notice to fix contested year-by-year valuations central to the controversy without allowing dispute by evidence.
- The Court reasoned that Ohio’s record-bound review mechanism made the concealment especially serious because it prevented meaningful review of the basis for the commission’s findings.

## Legal Principles

- Due process in administrative adjudication requires a fair and open hearing; decisions may not rest on secret evidence that the affected party cannot test or rebut.
- Judicial notice may cover general facts of common knowledge, but it cannot be used as a substitute for proof of specific, disputed, outcome-determinative facts (such as precise property valuations with yearly fluctuations) without an opportunity to contest them.
- When an agency relies on noticed facts, procedural fairness requires disclosure sufficient to permit the opposing party to dispute the noticed material through evidence.
- If judicial review is confined to the agency record, reliance on extra-record materials that are not made part of that record can effectively deny judicial review and compound the due process violation.

## Conclusion

The Court invalidated the refund order because the commission based valuation and rate consequences on undisclosed, extra-record “noticed” data, denying the utility a chance to contest the factual basis for the decision and undermining meaningful record-based judicial review.


Ohio Bell Tel. Co. v. Pub. Utils. Comm’n, 301 U.S. 292 (1937)