Toronto Hydro customers may pay for settlement

- Toronto Hydro consumers may be forced to compensate the utility almost $8 million for its share of a class-action lawsuit settlement involving illegal interest charges on late payments.

The electricity utility intends to ask the Ontario Energy Board for approval to recover its portion of the $17-million settlement, spokesperson Denise Attallah said.

Since Toronto Hydro has about 690,000 customers, that means the average customer will have to pay more than $11.

But Attallah added the settlement will not be finalized until September 22, after the end of a 30-day opt-out period for eligible customers and a 30-day appeal period for the litigants.

In the ruling, Ontario Superior Court Justice Peter Cumming approved the settlement of the lawsuit launched on behalf of customers against Toronto Hydro and other Ontario utilities for charging illegally high interest on late payments.

“The litigation has contributed to achieving behaviour modification by causing Toronto Hydro and the members of the defendant class to abolish the unlawful late payment penalties,” the judge said.

After legal costs are deducted from the $17 million settlement, the remaining $12 million will be used to help needy Ontario consumers pay their hydro bills, the judge said.

The United Way of Greater Toronto will administer the money for all parts of Ontario except Ottawa, where the funds will be controlled by United Way/Centraide Ottawa.

United Way of Greater Toronto’s Susan Vardon said the settlement money will be distributed to various economically disadvantaged hydro users over 10 years. “It will go far.”

The judge said it was “very problematic and excessively costly” to determine how much each overcharged customer should be compensated, so the alternative of helping disadvantaged hydro users provides “a public and social good.”

Up until the early 2000s, Toronto Hydro and other municipal electrical utilities charged late payment penalties of 5 or 7 per cent a month. But the Criminal Code prohibits charging interest of more than 60 per cent a year.

“If a utility bill was paid one day late, the 5 per cent late payment fee could have an extremely high effective annual interest rate percentage,” Cumming said.

Toronto Hydro reduced its late payment penalties to 1.5 per cent per month in 2000, and other utilities followed suit by 2002.

An economist retained by the plaintiffs estimated that, as of the end of 2009, Toronto Hydro customers saved $96.8 million after the utility reduced its penalty.