Pacific Gas and Electric customers in California can’t sue the utility company for financial losses that occur during public safety power shutoffs, the California Supreme Court ruled Nov. 20.
In the legal claim, Mr. Gantner said the company’s shutoffs in the fall of 2019 left him and other California residents and business owners without power for many days. They sought $2.5 billion to compensate for making their homes uninhabitable, loss of refrigerated food, loss of cell phone service, expenses for alternative means of lighting and power, dangerous dark conditions, lack of running water, and loss of productivity and business.
The lawsuit claimed the shutoffs were the result of the company’s decades of negligent maintenance of its power lines.
Specifically, the justices agreed that although the state’s public utilities regulations allow private citizens to sue utilities, the same laws also prohibit lawsuits that obstruct the official duties of the PUC, a public agency that regulates privately owned utilities in the state.
“We hold that allowing suit here would interfere with the PUC’s comprehensive regulatory and supervisor authority over [public safety power shutoffs],” Associate Justice Goodwin Liu wrote in the opinion.
By seeking billions of dollars in alleged damages, Mr. Gantner’s suit would “‘hinder’ or ‘frustrate’” the PUC’s carefully designed implementation of regulations, Justice Liu said in the opinion.
Chief Justice Patricia Guerrero, and all five associate justices concurred with the opinion.
During the October and November 2019 power shutoffs, the state found PG&E violated the state’s public utilities code and PUC guidelines for power shutoffs, because the company’s online outage maps were inaccurate and its website was unavailable and did not work. As a result, 50,000 customers were not notified ahead of time before the power was shut off.
The PUC fined the utility over $106 million for the violations.
Mr. Gartner’s attorneys did not immediately respond to a request for comment.