When bills don’t get paid, who is the negligent party?

For most of us, dealing with any utilities or large cooperation is quite simple, if a bit cold. Pay your bills to the last cent. Otherwise, they shut down the service in question, then merrily pursue you for the amount due, even if it costs them far more than whatever is owed.

There is a logical reason for this – it simply isn’t reasonable to insert a human element into every transaction or record when you have thousands, maybe even millions to deal with. This is where computers come in. Before that, farms of open desks populated by well trained, efficiently robotic humans did the work, acting in concert as a computer crafted from flesh. Either way, there is no time to deliberate on policy – only execute it.

The downside to this is naturally when a human element is needed. Most all of us can attest to the annoying automatic menus, causality loops, and hopeless, script fed call center operators. We deal with these realities because we want our phones, computers, electrical supplies and so on to function, and understand that it falls on us to defend our interests and take responsibility for the expenses.

The developer Pompeii Estates of Bayside New York evidently disagrees. In the case of Pompeii Estates, Inc. V. Consolidated Edison Co. Of N.Y., Inc, Pompeii estates argues that a “wrongful termination” of electrical services occurred, resulting in ~1000USD property damages. Grimmelmann, J. (n.d.). Internet law: Cases and problems.

Pompeii argued that the notices were sent to the estate rather than to their business offices, thus being not received and unaccounted for. The court ruled in Pompeii’s favor. Citing negligence on the part of Consolidated Edison Co.

I would postulate not only should this case been ruled in Consolidated Edison Co’s favor, but that they have grounds to immediately counter sue to recover the losses and court expenses.

Consider:

1. Negligence is defined as a lack of ordinary care. It is a failure to exercise that degree of care which a reasonably prudent person would have exercised under such circumstances. The court ruling specifically cited reasonable care in their ruling.
   

   While the computer is a useful instrument, it cannot serve as a shield to relieve Consolidated Edison of its obligation to exercise reasonable care when terminating service.

2. It should follow then, that disregarding one’s own payable accounts is by definition negligence. Any reasonable person could expect the lack of a bill of a billable service does not mean services will continue to be provided without payment.
3. It is further reasonable to assume that the party with a lesser record load and greater vested interest in the property would be aware of its status. Pompeii successfully argued that a computer executed billing policy without care. They did not however, at any point, show proof care was executed within their own processes to ensure records were kept and expenses accounted for.

The conclusion then, is it should be irrelevant what care the electrical company placed into executing its policies. The hard facts are that Pompeii’s offices did not have full knowledge of their own expenses, failed to pay the, and the electrical service ceased. Notices of termination are intended as a last warning, not a record keeping device. Further, the court went on to say the following:

Certainly, any reasonably prudent person, if in doubt, would contact Mr. Vebeliunas to ascertain the facts.

This is especially so when the termination of service is in the middle of winter and the foreseeable consequences to the heating system and the water pipes are apparent. Where there is a foreseeability of damage to another that may occur from one’s acts, there arises a duty to use care.

If any reasonably prudent person would contact the owner of a property they themselves do not have an interest in, due to knowing full well the consequences of an electrical termination – how is it reasonable for the OWNER of said property not to share the same level of responsibility? Furthermore, the court’s ruling indicated the line of fault to be in having a computer execute the policy of termination. If a bill is unpaid for two months and no notice of response is received from notice of termination, is it not also fair to assume a human would execute the same policy? Human and computer alike must make decisions based only on the information at hand.

Perhaps the case documentation available does not tell all of the story. There may be other details. Perhaps an appeal was filed and settled, or subsequent cases where the decision was reversed by a higher court. I find it impossible to conclude this court did not abide by the wording of its own ruling, and that Pompeii Estates was granted the kind of reward for negligence the rest of us would be laughed out of court attempting to collect.