The oblenergo will pay for equipment damaged by a power surge. How it happened
17 March 11:49
The court ordered the regional power distribution company to compensate for damages for household appliances that were damaged due to a power surge. This is reported by the Judicial Portal, "Komersant Ukrainian" informs.
However, the plaintiff, a resident of the village of Bila, Chernivtsi district, had to show considerable persistence to get this decision.
The first step was to file a lawsuit against Chernivtsioblenergo with the Pershotravnevyi District Court of Chernivtsi, in which the plaintiff asked to recover in his favor UAH 1,850 spent on repairing the refrigerator, UAH 200 for non-compliance with the standards of consideration of his complaint by the defendant, and UAH 10,000 in non-pecuniary damage. In addition, he requested that the energy supply company be obliged to repair other appliances, such as a home theater, coffee machine, router, water pump, LED lamp and lamps.
What caused the damage
The plaintiff explained that in November last year, a power surge occurred in his village, causing the villagers’ household appliances to break down, and the heating boiler and video surveillance and security system in the preschool education institution to fail.
The accident was caused by a transformer malfunction – the voltage in the grid increased to 350-400 volts, and electricity was supplied to two phases.
The next day after the incident, the village elder appealed to the Kitsmansky power distribution network of Chernivtsioblenergo JSC to resolve the issue of compensation for the damage.
In turn, 26 villagers whose houses were connected to the emergency transformer also filed a collective appeal and applications with a list of a large number of damaged appliances.
However, the energy supply company refused to compensate, stating that the accident occurred through no fault of its own.
In this regard, the plaintiff went to court to protect his rights.
How the case was considered in the courts
The Pervomaiskyi District Court of Chernivtsi partially satisfied the claim. It recovered UAH 1,850 from Chernivtsioblenergo JSC in favor of the plaintiff as compensation for the cost of repairing the refrigerator, which was confirmed by documents, and UAH 5,000 in non-pecuniary damage. The court dismissed the rest of the claims due to lack of evidence of the expenses incurred.
The defendant’s representative filed an appeal, in which he requested that the court’s decision be overturned and the claim dismissed due to lack of proof of guilt. He argued that the experts who arrived for the inspection did not establish the fact of overvoltage and damage to the line, and asserted that the cause of the electricity problems could be strong wind gusts on the day the household appliances were damaged.
However, the Court of Appeal upheld the decision of the first instance court.
What were the courts’ reasons for making the decision?
The panel of judges found the appellant’s arguments about the absence of voltage deviations to be unworthy of attention – the protocol referred to by the representative of Chernivtsioblenergo JSC as a proof of the absence of fault was drawn up by its employees not on the day of the accident, but the next day, when the crew arrived at the scene. At the same time, an entry in the operational log of the Kitsmansky district, which recorded the arrival of the repair team on the day of the accident, indicated that it was the transformer malfunction that caused a sharp voltage drop and, as a result, damage to the equipment.
The court also rejected the defendant’s reference to bad weather conditions: according to the hydrometeorological center, the wind had increased that day in another region, and the repair team did not find any power line breaks.
Thus, the Court of Appeal confirmed that Chernivtsioblenergo JSC was responsible for the voltage drop and damage to the equipment.
The Court of Appeal, recognizing the justification for the recovery of property damage from the defendant in favor of the plaintiff, stated in its decision: “it is the defendant who bears the burden of proving the absence of fault in causing the damage, and the plaintiff proves the existence of damage and its amount. The defendant, on the other hand, did not refute his guilt in causing damage to the plaintiff’s property with proper and admissible evidence and did not provide other evidence of the amount of property damage caused to the plaintiff, although this is his procedural obligation.”
