The outage snarled traffic, confused Waymo autonomous vehicles and disrupted public transit. It also harmed many small businesses, forcing them to close their doors on one of the busiest holiday shopping days of the year, losing out on major anticipated profits.
“These are mom-and-pop businesses,” Lee said. “They don’t have a big cushion; they operate on very thin margins. And this kind of devastating loss could mean the difference between keeping their doors open and closing.”
The fiasco was followed by a series of smaller, shorter outages, which mostly affected the city’s West Side. Richmond residents dealt with six outages through late December and early January, and blackouts in the Sunset have occurred as recently as last week.
The group, which says it will file the lawsuit this week, alleged a “systemic failure to provide reliable service” by PG&E in a statement Monday. Attorneys said they expect at least 40 businesses to join the suit, which aims to recoup monetary damages for losses incurred during the string of outages since December.
PG&E, which did not respond to a request for comment on the suit, has promised $200 credits to residences impacted by the outage, and larger $2,500 payments to commercial customers.
But the lawyers representing business owners said those payments are not enough.
Some of the suit’s plaintiffs have reported damages of more than $100,000, according to Quentin Kopp, a former judge advocating on behalf of the suit’s plaintiffs.
