Central Maine Power is Maine’s largest utility with more than 636,000 customers in a state of fewer than 1.4 million people. (Getty Images)
Maine’s high court affirmed on Tuesday a lower court’s dismissal of a case in which Maine utility customers alleged financial harm and emotional distress from disconnection notices sent by one of the state’s two largest utilities.
In 2020, the Maine Public Utilities Commission found that from 2018 to 2020 Central Maine Power had sent misleading communications to customers behind on their electric bills, threatening winter disconnection without providing accurate information about customers’ rights.
Utility companies have the right to disconnect their services to customers who fail to pay their bills, however Maine law generally prevents such disconnections during the winter.
Electric and natural-gas utility companies in Maine aren’t permitted to disconnect — or send notices signaling they will disconnect — customers from Nov. 15 through April 15 each year, known as the “Winter Disconnection Period,” unless they are granted permission by the PUC, which is rare.
A PUC investigation found CMP violated its rule and CMP agreed to pay a $500,000 penalty.
However, around the time of this investigation, three CMP customers who received the misleading communications also took personal action, suing to recover damages for injuries they allegedly suffered as a result of “systematic and repeated deception and misrepresentation by CMP in the form of ‘disconnection notices.’”
On Tuesday, the Maine Supreme Judicial Court ruled on the case, siding with the Business and Consumer Docket’s previous decisions.
The lower court concluded that the plaintiffs — Brett Deane, Henry Lavender, and Joleen Mitchell — failed to allege pecuniary harm, or monetary losses, which would be necessary to prove their misinterpretation claims. The lower court also dismissed the statutory cause of action. Lastly, the high court also upheld that the plaintiffs didn’t demonstrate severe emotional distress as defined by law, “and that CMP’s conduct, while extreme and outrageous, did not warrant an inference of severe emotional distress,” the decision read.
This past legislative session, Maine lawmakers placed further limits on utility companies’ ability to disconnect customers.
Senate President Troy Jackson (D-Aroostook) initially proposed statute changes around utility disconnections, barring utilities from disconnecting service remotely unless the company has made an in-person visit to a customer, as well as expanding the purpose of the PUC to include keeping rates affordable.
However, the Energy, Utilities and Technology Committee removed the provisions about in-person visits and expanding the purpose of the PUC and moved the rest of the legislation into the existing PUC rulemaking process rather than statute.
The amended version, which became law, directs the PUC to stipulate that utilities raise the current $50 threshold in unpaid bills for when disconnections are permitted, as well as bar utilities from charging low-income customers with restoration or reconnection fees and require that the companies waive late fees accrued prior to disconnection for such people.
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