State ex rel. C & P Telephone Co. v. Ashworth

In State ex rel. C & P Telephone Co. v. Ashworth, 190 W. Va. 547, 438 S.E.2d 890 (1993), the Court held that: Although the general rule is that one must exhaust administrative remedies before going into court to enforce a right, W. Va. Code 24-4-7 [1923] confers concurrent jurisdiction on the PSC and the circuit court in a limited number of cases--namely, those cases seeking a refund based on rules and practices of the PSC that are clear and unambiguous. In these limited cases, a plaintiff can proceed either before the PSC or the circuit court. However, these avenues are mutually exclusive: once a PSC complaint is filed, an appeal to the circuit court is foreclosed until the administrative remedies are exhausted.