Every now and then, the system accidentally trips over the truth. Colorado Politics covered a Colorado Supreme Court ruling that said the Public Utilities Commission overreached when it approved a rate tariff that tried to broadly immunize Xcel Energy from liability to non-customers injured by power lines, in a case stemming from a Lakewood electrocution injury.
The justices did not decide how far the tariff actually went in practice. They said the PUC lacked authority to approve immunity for injuries to non-customers, with a 5-1 split and a dissent arguing the PUC’s authority is broad unless the legislature restricts it.
The Bullet Point Brief
- Colorado Supreme Court ruled Xcel cannot rely on a rate tariff to broadly immunize itself from liability to non-customers injured by power lines.
- The Court said the Colorado Public Utilities Commission lacks authority to approve a tariff that limits a utility’s liability to non-customers under these circumstances.
- The lawsuit involves Francisco Cuevas, who was shocked while hanging Christmas lights at a Lakewood home in late 2017 and sued the homeowner and Xcel.
- The Court of Appeals had allowed part of the case to proceed and rejected the idea that the tariff alone provided immunity in that scenario.
- The Supreme Court mostly upheld the appellate outcome but went further on the PUC authority question; Chief Justice Monica M. Márquez dissented.
My Bottom Line
I have very little faith in the all-progressive, politicized Colorado Supreme Court. But sometimes, even a blind squirrel finds a nut. On this one, the black-robed regimen got it right: the PUC regulates utilities, it does not get to make them unaccountable to the public they serve.
Let’s not pretend this is complicated. Waiving immunity in the depths of a rate-setting document is the kind of back-room crap that makes normal people look at government and think, yeah, that’s a club and I’m not in it.
Here’s the part they skip: Normie Coloradans better wake up and start paying attention to just who the Public Utilities Commission is. It’s a body appointed by the governor that regulates utilities, including rate setting. That’s a lot of power for a group most people could not pick out of a lineup if their bill depended on it. Which, ironically, it does.
If regulators can quietly bless immunity language in tariffs, you and your neighbors get the risk while the system gets the cover.
And while the state legislature keeps the drum beat to mandate energy winners and electrify everything, the PUC needs to become a backstop for protecting people, not a big rubber stamp for Governor Polis, which is precisely what it is right now.
If it worked, they wouldn’t need to hide it in the fine print.
The fix is not complicated: keep liability rules where they belong, keep regulators in their lane, and demand sunlight on anything that shifts risk from powerful institutions onto regular people trying to do an honest job. If the PUC wants new authority, they can ask the legislature in plain English like everybody else.
Source: Colorado Politics
