Boston Edison Co. v. Brookline Realty & Investment Corp.

While the Superior Court judge correctly decided that the related administrative law doctrines of primary jurisdiction and exhaustion of administrative remedies required that a dispute over electric power charges be adjudicated first by the Department of Public Utilities of the Commonwealth (D.P.U.), the fact of the plaintiff’s attachment of property of the defendant required that the judicial proceedings be stayed, rather than dismissed.

We take our background facts largely from the memorandum of decision of the motion judge, as supplemented by affidavits of the parties which appear in the…