Winter storm lawsuits are piling up
Hundreds of cases blame power providers as the big freeze’s second anniversary nears
The legal battle pitting thousands of Texas residents and small business owners against hundreds of energy companies, such as NRG Power, Calpine, Oncor Electric and Exxon Mobil, over damages incurred during the deadly 2021 winter freeze is finally heating up.
This week’s anniversary of the crippling storm — blamed in the deaths of more than 200 and which left millions of Texans without power, heat and in some cases water — means that the two-year legal deadline for filing related lawsuits is about to take effect.
The result is that lawyers representing more than 1,500 Texans and businesses have filed more than 80 wrongful death, personal injury and property damage lawsuits against more than 360 energy companies, insurance companies and the Electric Reliability Council of Texas, the state’s grid manager, since Thursday. Dozens more lawsuits are expected to be filed in Texas courts this week. The deadline depends on the date of the injury to the plaintiff.
The new lawsuits will be combined with the 230 cases lodged in 20 counties across Texas. Those cases, which include more than 1,500 individuals and businesses, have been consolidated into one multidistrict litigation docket in Harris County for the purpose of case management. The plaintiffs seek billions of dollars in damages.
“Lawyers are hurrying this week to get the cases filed before the deadline, and I expect that in the neighborhood of a few thousand new personal injury and property damage cases will be filed this week,” said Gregory Cox, a partner in Houston’s Mostyn Law Firm, which represents hundreds of individuals in suits against the energy companies.
No trial dates have even been discussed, and lawyers for the
energy companies are asking that the cases be dismissed; they argue that allowing them to move forward would be “ruinous” to the industry.
“These are highly complex cases, and they often take a long time to get to resolution,” said Houston trial lawyer Eric Rhine, who represents scores of individuals in the litigation. “But these cases are moving forward.”
But the individual cases represent just a slice of the legal disputes involving Texas energy companies. A couple dozen power companies have sued ERCOT and the Texas Public Utility Commission challenging their decision to increase the wholesale price of electricity by 650 percent to $9,000 per megawatt-hour. A decision could come this week.
Immunity claims
Two other cases pending before the Texas Supreme Court challenge ERCOT’s claim that it is immune from civil lawsuits. A decision on that point is expected this spring.
Meanwhile, three energy companies — Brazos Electric Coop, Just Energy and Griddy — filed for corporate bankruptcy and restructuring.
“This litigation is massive, unlike anything we have ever experienced in Texas,” CenterPoint Energy Executive Vice President Jason Ryan said. CenterPoint is one of the companies being sued.
“What happened during those four to five days in February 2021 was the largest transfer of wealth in Texas energy history,” Ryan said. “The legal issues surrounding Winter Storm Uri are incredibly complex. Billions and billions of dollars are at stake.”
Scores of Texas electric companies asked a Houston appeals court Friday to dismiss the cases against them, saying the claims against them are without legal merit, would “upend the state’s electricity markets” and would “allow for ‘ruinous’ liability for entities that don’t contract with or deliver electricity to consumers.”
‘A national outlier’
“This litigation is as unprecedented as the 2021 winter storm that spawned it,” lawyers for the power generators, such as Dallas-based Luminant and Houston-based NRG, argued in legal documents filed last week. “The stakes are exceedingly high. If permitted to proceed, this litigation will upend the state’s electricity markets, stretch Texas negligence and nuisance law beyond recognition, and make the state a national outlier.”
Lawyers for Vinson & Elkins, who represent electric distribution and transmission utilities such as Oncor and American Electric Power, argue that their clients’ actions didn’t cause the plaintiffs’ injuries.
“Those injuries were caused by severely cold weather and the consequences thereof. They were not proximately caused by the absence of electric service,” the power companies told the Houston court of appeals last week.
Former Texas federal Judge Royal Furgeson said he would “be stunned” if the Houston appeals court dismisses the cases against the power producers.
“This is a gigantic case with incredible importance to the people of Texas,” Furgeson said. A longer version of this article is
available at TexasLawbook.net.