Angry about injuries or losses sustained from a smart meter? Take the utility to court. Submit your complaint today at Smart Meter Help to get the ball rolling, and/ or contact a lawyer. In addition to the lawsuits below- there are multiple proceedings at the state utility commission level.
Thanks to Burbank Action for this summary of lawsuits- if you know of others, notify them & us.
Residents opposed to the mandatory installation of smart meters on their homes and in their communities know their rights, and are not accepting what the utilities are handing down to them in the form of ill-conceived roll out and opt-out programs. Here are four major lawsuits. The list is sure to grow:
1. Kauai, Hawaii: Resident Adam Asquith files federal lawsuit in U.S. District Court seeking injunction against Kauai Island Utility Cooperative’s smart meter plan.” The complaint states that KIUC is “rushing forward with the installation of so-called ‘smart meters’ throughout the island of Kauai, Hawaii, despite serious security and privacy concerns, some of which involve apparent constitutional and statutory violations.” Read:
“Hawaii: Summons for Federal Injunction Helps Kauai Re-Think Smart Meters and Democracy,” March 28, 2012: http://www.afterenlightenment.net/Hawaii_Injunction.htm
Renew Grid, “Lawsuit Prompts Smart Meter Opt-Outs for Opponents in Hawaii,” posted Thursday, March 22, 2012: http://www.renewgridmag.com/e107_plugins/content/content.php?content.8202
Intelligent Utility, “Kauai utility sued to halt smart-meter plan,” posted March 21, 2012: http://www.intelligentutility.com/article/12/03/kauai-utility-sued-halt-smart-meter-plan
The Garden Island,”Smart meter controversy lands in court,” March 18, 2012: http://thegardenisland.com/news/local/crime-and-courts/smart-meter-controversy-lands-in-court/article_03bdf368-7265-11e1-bc69-0019bb2963f4.html
2. Naperville, Illinois: Residents have filed a federal lawsuit seeking an injunction, as well, against their municipal utility’s smart meter program. Go here to the Naperville Smart Meter Awareness Federal Lawsuit webpage for more details about the lawsuit: http://www.napervillesmartmeterawareness.org/federal-lawsuit/
3. Maine: Residents have filed a federal lawsuit against Maine Public Utility Commission and Central Maine Power: Read more details on Dr. Magda Havas’ website, which includes a link to the actual filing and other related legal documents: http://www.magdahavas.com/smart-meters-friedman-vs-maine-public-utilities-commission-and-central-maine-power-company/
Oral arguments before the Maine Supreme Judicial Court in the Smart Meter appeal of the PUC dismissal will be heard by the Court on Thursday May 10 at 9:50am. This is the scheduled time. Depending on what case comes before, actual time could vary a bit. Folks are encouraged to attend. The court is in Portland.
New at the court is live web streaming of arguments so for those of you in CA or BC, if you are up early, you too can listen. Two links below-the court home page with webcast link obvious when you go there and the more direct link to streaming instructions.
http://www.courts.state.me.us/
http://www.courts.state.me.us/maine_courts/supreme/stream.shtml
4. California
PG&E Territory. PG&E customers have filed a Class Action lawsuit against PG&E when their monthly bills skyrocketed after smart meters were installed on their homes. If you’re a PG&E customer who has suffered the same way, find our more about the lawsuit, by visiting the website of attorney Michael Kelly of the Kirkland & Packard LLP law firm: http://www.courtroomwarrior.com/smartmeters.php
SCE Territory: Small claims suit against Southern California Edison was appealed and eventually decided in plaintiff’s favor: remove the meter or pay damages. Cause of action was personal injury that electrical engineer Rob States helped document. In addition, the injured person’s husband is an attorney who expertly responded to SCE motions, according to Mr. States. Read SCE Brief and the Superior Court of California – County of Orange Judgement and ruling issued March 21, 2012. Docket for this Case, number 30-2011-00513876-SC-SC-CJC, can be accessed on the Superior Court’s website.’
Here is a video that explains in a kind understanding way why “Smart’ meters are not what they are claimed to be by the utility:
“Smart Meter Presentation in Vernon BC”, Nov 23rd 2011.
Curtis Bennett shows the harm EMFs have done.
http://www.stayonthetruth.com/curtis-bennett—smart-meters.php
Here’s a video, “Electromagnetic Fields: A Scientific Overview”, by the late Dr. Theodore (Ted) Litovitz, Physicist and EMR Researcher, Catholic University of America, showing adverse health effects at levels 75,000 times lower than what Health Canada, without relaying a reported Error or Omission, claims is allowable under Safety Code 6.
http://www.stayonthetruth.com/electromagnetic-fields—dr-ted-litovitz.php
“The error is that Safety Code 6 failed to consider that any given person is an intricate unprotected electrical unit with its own frequencies and voltages. Safety Code 6 treats humans as a piece of tissue or furniture and negates to mention human frequencies or electrical sensitivity.
Safety standards negating the electrical conflicts made the process miss causation or the mechanism scientifically linking harm with electromagnetic frequencies (EMFs). Thus, the failure to include people has resulted in no consideration for the frequency conflicts between radiofrequency radiation and humans.”
Curtis Bennett
Director of Operations.
Chief Science Officer.
Interprovincial Journeyman Electrician(Red Seal).
Engineering Technologist
Adjunct Faculty, IHF & GEDI.
Thermografix Consulting Corporation.
http://www.thermoguy.com/emfeducation.html
250-765-9897
http://www.stayonthetruth.com/curtis-bennett.php
“Please see… letter on wireless frequencies interacting with building development and infrastructure. That interaction violates Part 4 of BC Building Code on Vibration and brings on liability considerations.
Can tests or Risk Management considerations for this EMF exposure on buildings and infrastructure be forwarded, are municipalities insured for this? Have engineers and applicable professionals been informed of it? Municipalities, fire services, engineers, contractors, etc require direction.” ~ Curtis Bennett.
Radio Frequencies Compromising Buildings, Fire Separations, Electrical Systems, Fire Safety, Infrastructure, etc.
http://www.stayonthetruth.com/radio-frequencies-compromising-buildings.php
PG&E installed a smart meter on my house in September 2010. My electricity consumption supposedly then went up by a third, over several months. I complained to PG&E, but got no reply. I complained to the CPUC, who contacted PG&E. PG&E sent out an electricity worker, who not surprisingly said the smart meter was accurate. He said the older meter must have been inaccurate. I then tried several places to get an independent tester, with no luck.
We are in CRISIS!
Devices that will serve as slow kill weapons, presumably
that being collateral damage, are deployed against the
captive utility private monopolies customers. The agency
that was created to protect us from known psychopathic
corporate monopoly tendencies of such legal monopolies,
created to regulate said legal monopolies and serve as a
CHECK and BALANCE to the wealth and influence of
the agents of said utility monopoly interests, is, or more
accurately said: WAS the CPUC.
The CPUC has abandoned thir mandate and deserted us
and has suborned the CPUC to serve the interests of the
utility monopoly executives. There is NO OTHER check
and balance apparatus in place to protect us.
The CPUC commissioners regulate, or manage, the public,
the captive customer ratepayer population for the interests
of the private utility monopoly executives!!!!
What to do? What recourse is there?
The problem is serious. The devices are harmful albeit slowly
over time and imperceptibly to it’s victims until a critical mass
of DNA damage or other molecular damage emerges while
the cause remains unknown–the cause being wifi smart meters.
That is our FUTURE unless this deployment of wifi smart
meter devices is stopped and reversed.
What recourse do we have when the CPUC has gone rogue,
has treacherously turned that agency up-side-down? Has
sabotaged the ONLY agency in place to protect us from
just such psychopathic utility executive machinations?
A commission which aids and abets this assault on our
very DNA?
What recourse do reasonable men and women in California
have? Certainly NOT petitioning the five rogue commissioners.
That is doomed to failure as the commission has abandoned
it’s mandate and it’s judgments must reflect it’s adopted false
mandate of regulating You.
Perhaps we may ask, Must Ask, nay, DEMAND that our Other
Agencies of state and municipal government step firmly into
this morass, this void in our protection, and assume the position of
regulation in our name and deal with the CPUC commission
for what it is, the representative of the interests of the utility
private monopoly executive suites. Let us not pretend further
who and what the CPUC commission is. It is rogue.
Brendan,
Have you tried approaching your state legislators to reign in the rogue CPUC through legislative rules?
Make a packet for legislators and innundate them with meetings about it. That is what I have finally started to do here. Also, network. That is another thing I am having to get up to speed on. I think your state has lots of voices on this. Good luck!
With these new smart meters of which there is very little we know about. They are pushing these contraptions down our throats. It’s like being in a prison you want to scream and you know, that you can’t get out, unless some one opens the door. This is how I start to feel in my own home. Does it not make you wonder, why do we pay mortgages and home taxes? Nothing makes sense any more. B.C.Hydro, which is a public utility seems to think, that they are Gods gift to the human race Is it no wonder, that in the world people are fighting for Freedom and Democracy? People are tired of being controlled by corporations and corrupt governments. We were born free, but it is men who put the shackles on us Don’t allow these meters on your home ,because that is the time that your home is no longer yours.
Hi Soapbox Jill,
Organization is almost everything, I suppose and there may not yet be
sufficiency of it. Perhaps little children should be taught how to organize
among themselves and practice it as they grow so that they may stand a chance despite lowered IQ’s and diminished immune function from fluoridation and now
they will have DNA damage and all manner of as yet not clear results due to harmful
schemes from the Sociopathic dominance of utilities in California evident today.
I wrote my state Assemblyman and state Senator just recently, and a number of
state agencies and am now writing the city Supervisors to request that they
recognize that the CPUC is a rogue commission that has subverted their mandate leaving the public vulnerable to this agenda that is at least reckless disregard for the
ill health implications for captive customers of privately owned utility monopoly companies.
If nothing else, it is important to not let state government officials believe there is not
a pressing danger born of subversion of a key state agency.
I do reach out by email, and post letters almost every day currently because I am acutely aware of this crisis; the crisis is that people who act exactly like Sociopaths are in control of the executive suites of the utility monopolies and the state agency set up to protect the ratepayer captive customers from those executives’ schemes.
The usual failure, perhaps collusion of the mass media leaves many people
unaware of what is happening; unaware of the danger to them and theirs.
It would be beneficial to search out local online apparatus of small newspapers or online-only local news entities in California and find a place to make known there is a grave issue of danger from the wifie smart meter devices, mention the official position of the American Academy of Environmental Medicine as clearly stated in their Jan. 19, 2012 letter to the CPUC commissioners, who just simply IGNORED the AAEM expert opinion.
No one is acting to protect the utility customer’s interests and safety, those that are mandated to do so, and the state agency they control, have abandoned their posts and suborned their agency to hostile interests. UtilityPowers are acting very contrary to the interest of the public welfare and safty; and safety and health are every human being’s key interest. WE ARE NOT SAFE;
It is not naturally in the interest of a utility company to knowingly do harm to their customers and I think only genuine Sociopathic/Psychopathic executives could
pursue such a scheme; but there you are.
Brendan,
Have you tried setting up a meeting and bringing opt out legislative ideas to your state senator and representative? I don’t remember seeing anything about this attempt in California but I could have missed it. The resistance has appeared to be quite local, but effective in your state.
The reason I bring up face to face meeting is my own congressman said that makes more of an impact. I met with him and gave him ideas I worked up for possible legislation, plus health impact information. He sees it as a property rights issue, and that’s great because any angle will help.
My info. page of links for my senator included these links to help him formulate legislative ideas:
Legislative Activity Opposing Smart Meters in Other States http://myemail.constantcontact.com/Legislative-Efforts-Opposing-Smart-Meters-Across-the-US-.html?soid=1103014241183&aid=wGNPZw0XssM (3 pgs.)
Michigan bills: http://www.w4ar.com/Michigan_Smart_Meter_OPT_OUT_2012-HIB-5411.pdfhttp://www.w4ar.com/Smart_Meter_Bill_2012-HIB-5439.pdf (9 pgs.)
I hope to post the whole legislator packet of documents in the next week at my blog. They aren’t for CA, but may be helpful anyhow.
P.S. I agree about the media blackout. It is AMAZING there is NOTHING at Huff Post (on the left) or Drudge Report (on the right). This issue should trump politics, but neither side is covering the national movement going on against transmitting meters!
I noticed this media blackout as well. I watch Thom Hartmann on RT, I watch Democracy Now on TV, I read Alternet, and they never seem to mention anything at all about the SmartMeters and their smart grid, or the electrical power grid.
That leaves the science fiction people a great opportunity to mislead the un-educated public with far out videos.
I have seen some articles about the meter project in local media like Patch, the Bay Citizen and other local papers, but the national media , nothing.
In some of these local articles, there is a handful of posters on the forums that are very headstrong in their support of the SmartMeters. They have been brainwashed by the government/corporations into thinking that the SmartMeters and their radio smart grid are upgrading our electrical power grids, and enabling customers to save energy and money. But the reality is, the exact opposite is true. The SmartMeters and the radio smart grid do not save any energy at all, the sole purpose is to automate meter reading, eliminate human jobs and to be able to jack up the rates to one dollar per kilowatt/hour when they feel like it. The SmartMeters have nothing at all to do with the electrical power grid or upgrading, that is why the media blackout. They don’t want people to start questioning the scam.