CL&P Class Action Filed for Storm Response

November 15th, 2011. By AbiK

If there’s an award for the most “Aw, shucks” spirit when it comes to being on the receiving end of some slight, mishap or wrongdoing, it goes to some business owners in Granby and East Granby, CT, who seemingly don’t feel that the CL&P response to the recent storm outages was inadequate.

Yes, there’s something to be said for having a nonchalant approach to whatever life throws your way. Probably good for one’s blood pressure and risk of stroke. That’s the plus side of the coin—but as always, there’s a flip side to that coin and in this instance the flip side equates mediocrity.

Remember that recent end-of-October snowstorm that unexpectedly hammered the northeast? Remember reading about the millions of home and business owners who were stranded with out power for days on end? Well, a funny thing happened. Those folks (most of them) who were supported by companies like PSE&G in NJ found themselves with restored power within three days of the outage; in fact, PSE&G reported to its customers on November 1st that service had been restored to almost 90 percent of those who’d been affected by the storm.

That’s right. Ninety percent in three days.

And how many customers had power restored within three days in Connecticut? Well, if you go with reports that indicated some 955,000 Connecticut Light & Power (CL&P) customers lost power due to the storm and that as of November 1st only 275,000 had their power restored, that comes to about twenty-nine percent.

On a personal level, here at LawyersandSettlements.com, some of our staff is based in NJ and some in CT. Our NJ team was up and running at full speed again by Tuesday morning—so they were powerless for just over two days. Our CT team was still charging up smartphones in their cars and running over to Starbuck’s to hop on the wifi there. Until Saturday afternoon—November 5th. They went a week without power, without heat.

Now, there are plenty of folks in CT who are riled up about this—it’s been all over the news with CT Governor Malloy demanding a full in-depth review of CL&P’s response. There has also been a class action lawsuit filed (by Scott Simmons who owns a hair salon in Canton) that seeks $1,000 in damages. But it’s not about the money—according to an article at The Farmington Patch, it’s about finding out why CL&P’s response was so lousy.

And that brings us to our “Aw, shucks” award. According to a recent article over at The Granbys Patch, some business owners don’t see the need for a class action lawsuit. And maybe they’re right…had the CL&P response been anywhere in the ballpark of CT’s neighboring states. But it wasn’t.

Here’s an example, from The Granbys Patch,  of that “aw, shucks” sentiment about the situation—from business owner Lori Love who owns Granby Village Health:

When asked, however, if she is thinking of joining the class action lawsuit, Love replied, “Unequivocally, no.” 

“Did anyone take a look at the number of trees down?” Love asked rhetorically. “Nobody can criticize for one minute how hard CL&P [employees] have worked. People are just looking for someone to blame and be angry at. 

“What if they had emergency crews on standby? What would that do to our rates? There’s no point [to joining a lawsuit]. It doesn’t serve a purpose. Let’s just get things fixed and move on and get paid back from the insurance company, to which I pay a monthly premium.”

No one can criticize how hard CL&P employees have worked? How about how hard the management there has “worked”? And why were NJ residents—who were afflicted with just as many trees and power lines down—having their power restored so quickly compared to CT? Something doesn’t seem right, right?

And what about the “Let’s just get things fixed and move on and get paid back from the insurance company” bit? Hey, I’m sure everyone’s for moving on and putting this mess in the rearview mirror. But, does anyone really think that without any impetus—say, a lawsuit or official investigation—that CL&P is just going to invest in some Six Sigma deep dive to review and improve its emergency response processes? Yeah, right. Oh, and your insurance check is in the mail, too.

CL&P barely hit the mark of mediocrity on this one. And it was glaring because it’s as if someone set up—quite serendipitously—an A/B test in which CT was “A” and NJ was “B” and the variable being tested was what power company was involved. Kind of hard to hide behind the “unusual circumstances” of the storm then.

So CL&P has some explaining to do. And if a class action lawsuit provides some motivation, so be it.

By the way, as of this writing, CL&P had announced the establishment of a storm fund to help reimburse customers for reported losses. The fund was set at $10 million. You do the math—based on the reported 955,000 customers who were powerless, that would come to $10.47 per customer. You can bet that $10.47 will go a long way to compensating folks for all the food they had to ditch once it got beyond that “safe for 48 hours” window.

Regardless, for those CT residents who would like to participate in a survey that ostensibly will be used to establish how CL&P’s storm fund will be distributed, you can do so at the United Way of Connecticut 211 website. The link to the survey is here.

Tags: CL&P, Class Action Lawsuit, Connecticut Light & Power, CT, NJ, Power Outage, PSE&G, Storm Response

This was posted on Tuesday, November 15th, 2011 at 1:32 pm and is filed under Class Action, Emerging Issues . Feel free to respond, or trackback. Read our comments policy.