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A Texas plastics company claims it and other MidAmerican customers were gouged with energy bills in a class action lawsuit filed Tuesday.
Lead plaintiff, J&M Plastics, Inc, lodged the complaint against the Berkshire Hathaway Energy affiliate in Texas federal court. J&M claims that MidAmerican Energy Services passed fees through to customers, resulting in energy bills many times higher than normal in the aftermath of the Texas winter storm that devastated the region in February.
MidAmerican serves 15,000 energy customers in Texas, along with 60,000 across the nation, according to the Tyler Morning Telegraph. J&M alleges that the energy company violated the terms of its contracts with larger commercial customers by passing through costs sustained during the storm, resulting in a nearly $54,000 bill for the plastics company that employs approximately 40 people.
The class action lawsuit says that MidAmerican’s April bill to J&M was three times higher than average, despite the company’s attempts to conserve energy during the Texas storm by shutting down and only keeping the facility warm enough to ensure the pipes did not freeze.
J&M claims that MidAmerican is trying to pass of the costs of the storm to it and larger commercial companies with a fixed-price contract.
“MidAmerican minimized its own exposure to the Texas power grid’s price spikes during the winter storm and took advantage of customers at a vulnerable time, as they experienced power outages and other hardships during the winter storm,” contends the class action lawsuit.
The plaintiff points out that MidAmerican has admitted it cannot pass these costs through to other customers, but is attempting to extract compensation for its own mismanagement of the Texas storm through fixed-price contract customers.
“MidAmerican has already acknowledged that it can’t pass through these same costs to their residential and small business customers, because of the Public Utility Commission’s consumer protection regulations,” an attorney representing J&M said in a statement. “But the company’s still trying to unlawfully use a statewide disaster to take advantage of and price-gouge thousands of larger commercial customers.”
The class action lawsuit accuses MidAmerican Energy of breach of contract, misrepresentation, negligence, and violating the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act. J&M is seeking to represent other MidAmerican Energy customers who were hit with “excessive and/or exorbitant electricity prices” in the aftermath of the Texas storm.
Are you a MidAmerican customer? Did you pay sky-high energy bills in the Texas storm power outage? Tell us about your experience in the comment section below!
The lead plaintiff is represented by Derek H. Potts, T. Micah Dortch, and J. Ryan Fowler of The Potts Law Firm, LLC.
The Texas Storm Power Outage Class Action Lawsuit is J&M Plastics, Inc. v. MidAmerican Energy Services, Case No.2:21-cv-00206, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas in Marshall.
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