Attorneys Want Utility Owner to Be Held Responsible for Utah Power Outages

Attorneys Want Utility Owner to Be Held Responsible for Utah Power Outages

By Jeff DeMoss, Standard-Examiner, Ogden, Utah -- May 1

Two Salt Lake City attorneys have filed a class action petition asking the Utah Public Service Commission to hold Utah Power owner PacifiCorp responsible for outages that affected at least 80,000 Utah Power customers during fierce winter storms in the last week of 2003.

David Irvine and Alan Smith filed the petition late Thursday. It asks the PSC to investigate whether PacifiCorp violated its customer service agreement with the PSC by moving some company functions from Utah to Oregon, and to treat customers who were affected by the outages as a class for the purpose of determining possible compensation awards.

"We're asking them to determine whether the length of the outage was due to organizational changes within PacifiCorp," Irvine, a former PSC commissioner, said. "The company can move its corporate pieces around however it wants, but it can't degrade its service to Utah customers." The action is technically not a lawsuit since it was filed with a regulatory agency rather than a district court, but the PSC will have authority to fine the company if it concludes the outage was not a "major event" attributable entirely to the weather, commission spokeswoman Julie Orchard said.

"We've had some questions about the length of the outage," she said. "Just like the utility expects customers to pay their bills, we expect the utility to invest in the infrastructure necessary to provide reliable, efficient and continuous service." She said the total number of affected customers was probably closer to 190,000, but 80,000 called in to report an outage.

Any violations discovered in an investigation could carry fines of between $500 and $2,000 per day.

The petition comes two weeks before Utah Power and the PSC are scheduled to release their own findings of an internal investigation regarding the outages that lasted more than four days for some customers.

Utah Power spokesman Kimball Hansen said he was surprised to learn of the petition Friday morning, as the company is nearing the end of its own comprehensive self-audit.

"The commission will have to decide how it handles it, whether it will roll it into the existing process, dismiss it, or treat it separately," he said. "We will continue to look at the allegations, and respond to the commission as we see appropriate." Utah Power earlier this year reimbursed nearly $2 million to more than 16,000 affected customers as a "goodwill credit," an amount Irvine said is woefully inadequate.

"Some customers alone lost thousands as a result of the outages," he said. "Pick a number between $500 and $1,000 and multiply it by 80,000, and it makes the amount (Utah Power) paid almost insignificant." He said it is "entirely possible" that some commercial customers could also join the class action.

Orchard said Utah Power has 15 days to respond to the petition, at which time the PSC will decide whether to formally pursue the process.

While he acknowledged room for improvement, Hansen expressed some confidence that the outages will be blamed on the weather, and not on the company.

"We're working to improve our processes and respond even better under similar circumstances," he said, "but that storm has been described by some as the worst ever recorded in this valley."

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