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Judge denies JEA's call to fix 'errors' in decision to move Vogtle case

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Judge denies JEA's call to fix 'errors' in decision to move Vogtle case

The legal battle between JEA and Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia will remain in Georgia after a U.S. district judge tossed out JEA's motion to review another judge's order to move the legal dispute back to Florida.

U.S. District Judge Mark Cohen on Sept. 18 denied JEA's request "to reconsider interlocutory orders to correct manifest errors" in U.S. District Court Judge Brian Davis' July 12 order to move the Jacksonville, Fla., utility's suit against the Municipal Electric Authority of Georgia, or MEAG. The legal dispute, which stems from JEA's contract to purchase electricity from two unfinished nuclear reactors at the Alvin W. Vogtle Nuclear Plant, moved from the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida in Jacksonville, Fla., to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia in Atlanta. MEAG is a part owner of Vogtle.

JEA said in an Aug. 8 filing that it would not ask to move the case back to Florida if the court changed the basis for the transfer and applied the appropriate legal transfer analysis for JEA and the city of Jacksonville's claims that would ensure Florida law would be applicable in the case "to prevent potential prejudice."

However, Cohen ruled that "the entire basis for plaintiffs' motion for reconsideration does not exist" and that regardless of the basis of the transfer, Georgia law will still apply in this case because the power purchase agreement indicates that any legal dispute with the power purchase agreement would be argued under Georgia law.

JEA and MEAG have been fighting over the validity of their power contract for Vogtle, in which MEAG holds a 22.7% stake, for the past year after the two parties sued each other in September 2018.

The lawsuits were prompted by Vogtle project partner Oglethorpe Power Corp.'s disclosure in August 2018 that the total project costs to finish the two reactors would increase by $1.5 billion for MEAG, Oglethorpe, Georgia Power Co. and the City of Dalton, Ga. Units 3 and 4, which were supposed to come online in 2016 and 2017, are now scheduled to begin commercial operation in 2021 and 2022. The delays and cost increases prompted JEA to call on MEAG to vote against Vogtle's construction and allow JEA to exit the power contract. MEAG declined to do so.

In April, Cohen dismissed MEAG's lawsuit against JEA in the Georgia district court while JEA's legal claims against MEAG continued. MEAG challenged the decision in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, but its appeal was denied.

Georgia Power is a subsidiary of Southern Co.