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History
- Referred to energy and telecommunications
- Referred to energy and telecommunications
Full text
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Sponsor's memo
BILL NUMBER:S2533
Title of bill
An act to amend the public service law, in relation to the liability of gas and electric corporations arising from the negligence of their employees, servants or agents
Purpose or general idea of bill
In its January 2007 report, the Assembly Queens Power Outage Task Force recommended several measures to improve oversight of utilities and prevent future blackouts. This bill will provide incentives for utilities to ensure that their systems provide safe and adequate service by eliminating special treatment for electricity and gas suppliers with respect to their responsibility for negligent operations.
Summary of provisions
Bill § 1 amends subdivision 12 of § 66 of the Public Service Law to prohibit the filing by gas or electric corporations of any schedules absolving any such corporation from liability for the interruption of its supply of services arising from the ordinary negligence of its employees, servants, or agents. Any such schedule currently filed is deemed void as against public policy.
Effects of present law which this bill would alter
No current statutory language addresses waivers of ordinary negligence by gas or electric corporations.
Justification
Last summer, the western part of Queens suffered a massive power outage that lasted 9 days. The Assembly Queens Power Outage Task Force studied the outage's causes and the inadequate responses by the company responsible for the transmission and distribution system, Consolidated Edison, and by the Public Service Commission. One underlying cause of this debacle was found to be the reliance by New York's utility regulators on antiquated laws, regulations and policies that let companies engaged in energy transmission and distribution operate without effective oversight.
Several of the findings and recommendations of the Task Force concerned the inadequacy of Consolidated Edison's policies regarding reimbursement for its failure to deliver a safe and adequate supply of electricity, as the Public Service Law requires. One fundamental barrier to the public's ability to be appropriately compensated is the current language in the tariffs filed by electric and gas utilities disclaiming any responsibility for disruptions of service, except in cases of gross negligence.
The Task Force recommended that the Legislature should amend the Public Service Law to remove the tariff bar against suits for damages from outages due to simple negligence. This bill would accomplish this goal, which would result in assigning the same degree of legal responsibility to operators of energy transmission and distribution systems as virtually every other business currently bears.
Prior legislative history
None.
Fiscal implications for state and local governments
None.
Effective date
Immediately.
Summaries, headlines and scores are AI-generated from the official bill text. How we score bills. Source: NYS Open Legislation.