A panel of judges has said that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the 2021 blackout. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.

Almost three years since the deadly Texas blackout of 2021, a panel of judges from the First Court of Appeals in Houston has ruled that big power companies cannot be held liable for failure to provide electricity during the crisis. The reason is Texas’ deregulated energy market.

The decision seems likely to protect the companies from lawsuits filed against them after the blackout. It leaves the families of those who died unsure where next to seek justice.

…

This week, Chief Justice Terry Adams issued the unanimous opinion of that panel that “Texas does not currently recognize a legal duty owed by wholesale power generators to retail customers to provide continuous electricity to the electric grid, and ultimately to the retail customers.”

The opinion states that big power generators “are now statutorily precluded by the legislature from having any direct relationship with retail customers of electricity.”

      • reddig33@lemmy.world
        12·
        11 months ago

        I wish this state would split into multiple smaller states. Not all of us who live here are conservative nut jobs. Let us have our autonomy from the red counties.

        • PrincessLeiasCat@sh.itjust.works
          7·
          11 months ago

          They know they need the entirety of the size of the state to overcome any of the larger metro areas. Break that up and they’ll lose the power & prestige it brings in the Electoral College. They’ll never give that up, hence the massive voter suppression.

          • cerement@slrpnk.net
            7·
            11 months ago

            fun little thought experiment: Texas secedes from the US but then the metro centers secede from Texas and rejoin the US (Dallas taking banking with them, Austin taking the capital, San Antonio taking the Alamo, …) – we can let them keep scenic Midland and Odessa, but Big Bend National Park and Johnson Space Center as well as all the military bases are federal property …

      • mateomaui@reddthat.comEnglish
        3·
        11 months ago

        No worries, that’s why he hangs his hat in Tennessee, which probably comes with its own issues.

          • mateomaui@reddthat.comEnglish
            1·
            11 months ago

            Is Tennessee one of those states? Can never understand how the “save the children” crowd and the “marry ‘em too young to know better” crowd intersect.

            • Buddahriffic@lemmy.world
              2·
              11 months ago

              Because they don’t want to “save the children” for the sake of the children but for the sake of their fragile egos that can’t handle the idea that their wife might have had other experiences to compare with.

    • LeadSoldier@lemmy.world
      5·
      11 months ago

      I had to live in HEll Paso because I was stationed there in the army. Iraq was better. The good news is I was able to leave.

  • RampageDon@lemmy.world
    28·
    11 months ago

    Remember when Texas was threatening to secede and then everyone realized the state just falls apart when they have any kind of weather besides 90 and sunny.

    • EatYouWell@lemmy.world
      317·
      11 months ago

      Many southern states aren’t equipped to deal with snow and such, because it doesn’t usually happen. It doesn’t make sense to buy and maintain plows and salt trucks for the one day every 5 years that enough slow falls for it to be necessary. Plus, people only buy 3 season tires for the same reason.

      That’s like shitting on England because a bunch of people died in an 80F heat wave.

      • RampageDon@lemmy.world
        23·
        11 months ago

        Who cares about salting and plowing. No one is knocking on Texas for not having the same level of road maintenance as a northern state. If you have major power outages across the state any time there is a strong breeze you have an issue. Texas was literally asking for disaster relief aid to get power back to residents because it got a little too cold. After that, rather than fixing the problem they doubled down and had astronomical prices for power. Now on top of all of that the courts ruled power companies, a utility that is a necessity, don’t actually have to supply you with that necessity.

        So your comparison should be more that people in England died when it hit 80F because the water companies couldn’t handle the heat and water stopped being supplied. So yea if that happened everyone should be shitting on England.

      • Zorque@kbin.social
        141·
        11 months ago

        They specifically scrapped a system that would have prevented the freezes that have been regularly happening for the last several years.

        Sure, a freak storm that happens once a millennia is understandable… but if it starts happening on a regular basis, they’re at fault if they don’t account for it.

  • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
    4·
    11 months ago

    All this really means is that the life insurance companies won’t be able to transfer their financial liability to the power companies.

  • DevCat@lemmy.worldOPEnglish
    0·
    11 months ago

    When you create an account with a utility, aren’t you creating a contract with them? What happened to contractual duty?

    • Zippy@lemmy.world
      01·
      11 months ago

      Your contact is to pay for the power they provide. It is a regulated field so if something fails, then it is up to the regulators to cover the costs of they want more redundancy but 100 percent guarantees are not possible. Solar doesn’t provide all days and wind can be gone for weeks. Do you think you should be able to sue them for that?

  • library_napper@monyet.cc
    12·
    10 months ago

    Are they allowed to also selectively release electricity to the highest bidder, so that only rich people get power when the system is stressed?

  • ShadowRam@kbin.social
    322·
    11 months ago

    It’s a free open market.

    If you lose your power, just switch to another supplier that doesn’t go down.

    • henfredemars@infosec.pubEnglish
      7·
      11 months ago

      It’s like that time I had a seizure and my bad that the ambulance took me to an out of network hospital. My mistake.

    • Asafum@feddit.nl
      2·
      11 months ago

      It must be wonderful to live in a place that doesn’t monopolize necessities. I have exactly one source of power and I’m not even in Texas. I have one source of Internet, I have one source of water. :(

      • ShadowRam@kbin.social
        1·
        11 months ago

        again… that’s a hard /s

        That’s the joke. No one can just switch to a different provider willy nilly.

        • Asafum@feddit.nl
          1·
          11 months ago

          That’s a wooooosh for me then sorry lol there are too many people that say what you did with a straight face so you never know. Poes law and all that jazz :P