When executed from a button, Set UTILITY=Toggle does indeed toggle the current state of the Utility pane. However, when executed from a hotkey, it brings up the pane if it is initially OFF, but does nothing if the pane is initially ON. Bug?
Regards, AB
Not able to test this atm but it could be because the hotkey isn't global ?
Now there's a first.... answering my question before I asked it! 
I tried making it a global key but it made no difference.
Regards, AB
Strange, when I first posted my answer showed after your msg.
WOW man! That a whole nother level of service here on our favorite forum... answering a question ONE MINUTE before the poster asks the question. YOU ROCK DUDE!!!
I can repro what you're seeing - but setting it global like Steve suggested definitely gets it to work for me... even if there is another app window in focus when I use the hotkey.
FWIW - it seems to me to be a bug. It looks like input focus is switched to the utility panel when you toggle it on (which I rather expect is desired behavior)... but from there, it looks like non system-wide hotkeys do not function while the utility panel has focus... If you click into empty lister white space or select a file, the hotkey works again. I'll report when I get home.
[quote="steje"]@Steve:
WOW man! That a whole nother level of service here on our favorite forum... answering a question ONE MINUTE before the poster asks the question. YOU ROCK DUDE!!![/quote]
Maybe this is achieved through a new tachyon messaging technique?
My father might call it retroactive foreshadowing...
Looks like I must have failed to change to global properly. After making and validating the change to global it now works as expected.
Thanks for reporting.
Cheers, AB