This action is not for the breach of a contract, but for the breach of a duty owed by defendant to plaintiff. The contract alleged in the complaint is a matter of inducement’.only. Its office is to show a relationship between the parties out of which the duty in question arose. Mobile Life Ins. Co. v. Randall, 74 Ala. 170, 178.

The negligence charged is with respect to acts, already done, and it is immaterial whether or not the contract contemplated their performance within a year, or whether for any other reason the contract would have been unenforceable as an executory agreement. Hence the plea of the statute of frauds is not a valid defense to the action, and the seventeenth gx*ound of the demurrer to the plea was apt and should have been sustained. .

It is, however, insisted for the defendant that the overruling of the demurrer to this plea was error without injury, because the ease was tried and determined solely upon the issue of negligence vel non on the part of the defendant in the installation of the electrical stove, and in the wiring and fusing-incidental thereto. This view cannot be sustained.

After stating that the first plea was the general issue, and explaining its effect, the trial judge added:

“So in this case the burden is on the plaintiff to reasonably satisfy you from this evidence that the defendant company was negligent under the rule that I have given you and as a proximate consequence of that negligence this damage resulted. * * * That is the main issue submitted to you in this ease.”

Then this further instruction was added:

*561 “The other plea of the defendant is that this contract that was entered into * * * was not to be performed within a year from the date of its execution, which is August 18, 1923. Under the law in this state, * * * if a contract is entered into that is not to be performed within a year, [it]is not a good contract unless it is in writing; in other words, if it cannot be performed within the year, then it must be in writing to be a good contract. If that is not proved, then it is in the teeth of the statute of frauds as we call it. So, applying that principle of law in this case, under that plea you would consider whether or not this alleged contract was to be performed within a year from the date of its execution, August 18, 1923. If it was not to be performed under the terms of the contract within the year, then the defendant company would not be bound by that verbal contract.”

At defendant’s request the jury were instructed:

“That, if the alleged agreement * * * to maintain the stove in plaintiff’s house was not to be completed within 12 months from August 18, 1923, then such alleged agreement was void, and the defendant would not be bound thereby.”

The plea in question was interposed as a bar to plaintiff’s right of action. The instructions given to the jury by the trial judge ex mero motu, and also at defendant’s request, show that the plea was not abandoned or disregarded, but was, on the contrary, submitted to the jury as a defense, which, if affirmatively found, would avoid the cause of action. We are therefore unable to hold that the retention of the plea was error without injury.

The Publid Service Commission is authorized to make “such minor rules and regulations as are necessary or appropriate for the administration and enforcement of the general laws of the state,” 'and the delegation of this quasi legislative power to administrative boards is not a violation of the constitutional prerogative of the Legislature. Parke v. Bradley, 204 Ala. 455, 458, 86 So. 28; 12 R. C. L. 1265, § 3. As said by the Supreme Court of Indiana, the true test and distinction whether a power is strictly legislative, or whether it is administrative, and merely relates to the execution of the statute law, “ ‘is between the delegation of power to make the law, which necessarily involves a discretion as to what it shall be, and conferring authority or discretion as to its execution, to be exercised under and in pursuance of the law.’ The first cannot be done. To the latter, no valid objection can be made.” Blue v. Beach, 155 Ind. 121, 140, 56 N. E. 89, 96, 50 L. R. A. 64, 80 Am. St. Rep. 195, 210; United States v. Grimaud, 220 U. S. 506, 517, 31 S. Ct. 480, 55 L. Ed. 563.

This subject was very fully and ably discussed by Mr. Justice Whitfield in State v. A. C. L. R. Co., 56 Fla. 617, 47 So. 969, 32 L. R. A. (N. S.) 639. With respect to its constitutional aspects he said:

“The Legislature may not delegate the power to enact a law, or to declare what the law shall be, or to exercise an unrestricted discretion in applying a law; but it may enact a law, complete in itself, designed to accomplish a general public purpose, and may expressly authorize designated officials within definite valid limitations to provide rules and regulations for the complete operation and enforcement of the law within its expressed general purpose. * * ♦ [Such authority] is not an exclusively legislative power.”

Our statute (Code, § 9741) declares:

“The [Public Service] Commission shall have general and exclusive power to regulate and. supervise every utility in respect to its rates and service regulations, and in respect to its franchises, licenses, and contracts in so far as they affect its rates and service regulations.”

Some of the 22 rules of the commission, notably 17 and 21, deal with matter? ofl liability, and prescribe rules of substantive law, that are clearly beyond the purview of administrative authority, and are not authorized by any grant of power to the commisv sion, express or implied. As to the othei rules admitted in evidence, conceding theii validity, we are unable to see any legitimate field for their operation in this case. We think they are irrelevant and without any proper influence upon the question of the defendant’s liability vel non for the negligence charged in the complaint. It results that plaintiff’s exception' to the single ruling of the trial court, admitting all of these rules in evidence, was well taken and should have been sustained.

Por the errors noted, the judgment will be reversed, and the cause remanded for another trial.

Reversed and remanded.