AUSTIN, Texas (Legal Newsline) – A courtroom is the proper forum for Hurricane Harvey-related gripes with a Texas power company, the state’s Supreme Court has ruled.
It did so June 25 against arguments from Texas-New Mexico Power Co. that attempted to steer a massive lawsuit against the company into Public Utility Commission proceedings. TNM argued the commission has exclusive original jurisdiction over it, but the court ruled the other way because the lawsuit does not involve “rates, operations and services.”
The negligence claims asserted against TNM shall be heard in court instead. Plaintiffs, who are homeowners near the Junemann Bayou in La Marque, allege TNM caused excess flooding during Hurricane Harvey in September 2017.
The company had begun construction of a new substation, and large wooden mats formed a runway to transport heavy equipment.
TNM’s contractor abandoned the mats, unsecured, when Harvey approached. The plaintiffs say the mats were pushed into the bayou and became lodged against drainage ports. The bayou overflowed and flooded the plaintiffs’ homes, they say.
“Plaintiffs’ complaints in this case—that TNM left the mats adjacent to the Bayou, unsecured, prior to Harvey’s arrival—are not about TNM’s operations and services as a utility,” Chief Justice Nathan Hecht wrote.
“Although the negligence Plaintiffs allege occurred in the context of construction on utility facilities, that context is merely a coincidence. The mats could have been used on any kind of construction project and left unsecured by any kind of contractor. ‘
“As TNM conceded at oral argument, a claim alleging that one of its drivers caused a car accident would not involve its rates, operations, or services and, therefore, would not fall within the PUC’s exclusive jurisdiction. We see no distinction between that situation and the one here.”
The decision was reached the same day as a similar issue with Oncor Electric was decided. It allowed a property owner who shocked himself on Oncor’s power lines while trimming trees to pursue his claims in state court instead of at the PUC.
Hecht dissented in that case, though. He wrote that the issues of when a utility should run power lines and where both directly involve the utility’s operations and services, which would trigger PUC jurisdiction.