Summit Utilities is back in litigation after generally clearing up billing problems that led to thousands of complaints and an Arkansas Public Service Commission investigation.
The PSC found in July that Summit’s billing problems had largely been fixed, that payments were no longer going uncredited and that Summit wasn’t gouging customers when it passed on higher gas prices during extreme winter weather.
The commission agreed with Summit and Attorney General Tim Griffin on a framework for Summit to resume last month normal collection practices it had suspended during the billing crisis. Those include cutting off service for non-payment and late fees to delinquent bills.
But in a lawsuit filed Sept. 18 in Garland County Circuit Court, a Hot Springs physician with a professional building at 1900 Malvern Ave. claims that Summit failed “to appropriately pass on the actuarial price of natural gas” and “price-gouging” to the plaintiffs.
The plaintiffs are Ouachita Professional Center Horizontal Property Regime Inc. and Dr. James Campbell, the company’s president.
The suit, filed by attorneys Daniel Holland and Scott Poynter of the Poynter Law Group of Little Rock, alleges that the professional center’s gas bill soared from $631 in January 2022 to $6,624 in January of this year, an increase of 947%. February’s bill, not counting a past-due amount from January, was $4,886, up 208%.
When the PSC inquiry into Summit’s billing difficulties began in March, the plaintiffs’ bills “dropped well below the amounts from the same months the prior year,” the suit says.
Summit, of Centennial, Colorado, has about 425,000 business and residential gas accounts in Arkansas after buying assets of CenterPoint Energy for $2.15 billion in January 2022.
The company says 33,000 Arkansans are behind on their bills to the tune of about $25 million, but that it has sent shutoff notices only to those owing $1,000 or more — about 4,600.
In testimony last summer, Elana Foley of the PSC general staff said Summit had a transition services agreement with CenterPoint to handle accounting, billing and customer service for a year while Summit built up its infrastructure.
When billing was turned over to Summit’s new system, some customers got multiple bills, others didn’t get proper credit for payments and complaints flooded in. But by the time Foley testified on July 11, she said the PSC was still dealing with just three billing complaints from Summit customers. It’s unclear if Ouachita Professional Center’s bills were among those.
Holland and Poynter are the same lawyers who represented customers in a class-action suit against Summit that was voluntarily dismissed in March in anticipation of the PSC investigation.
The PSC inquiry cleared Summit of price-gouging but ordered it to provide quarterly reports on its billing process. The commission also told Summit to give delinquent customers up to 18 months to pay bills in arrears, as long as they make payment arrangements.
The current lawsuit asks the court to declare a breach of good faith by Summit and to allow the plaintiffs to stop making monthly gas payments without being shut off or threatened with shutoffs until a judge rules on the case.
Summit, which has hired 75 new customer service representatives in Arkansas and Oklahoma since November 2022, issued a statement to Arkansas Business: “We are aware of the civil lawsuit filed against the company. We don’t comment on pending litigation. The company takes these matters very seriously and we are happy to work with any customer who has questions or concerns about their bill.”
Sign up for Daily E-news
