A court yesterday ruled that as Enemalta Corporation enjoyed a monopoly on the provision of electricity it was in duty bound to issue correct bills to the consumer.
Victor Spiteri, owner of V & F Supermarket in Sliema sued Enemalta and the Water Services Corporation over wrong bills he had received.
Mr Spiteri said he had opened his supermarket in 1990 and for the first four years he had regularly received water and electricity bills from the WSC and punctually paid them. Then, in mid-1994, the WSC asked him to pay an additional €27,300.25 for electricity consumption between December 1993 and April 1994. A second request for payment followed, this time for €3,268, covering electricity consumption between April and August 1994.
When Mr Spiteri contested the bills it turned out that they had been issued after the two corporations realised that the original bills (which had already been paid) contained mistakes made by their staff.
Enemalta had admitted its error but threatened Mr Spiteri it would cut the power supply to the supermarket and to his residence if the bills were not paid. It had only offered him a discount of €2,300 on the bills he had contested, Mr Spiteri said.
He asked the judge to stop Enemalta and WSC from disconnecting the electricity supply and to declare that he did not owe them any additional payments for the period between 1990 and August 1994.
Enemalta said that when it examined its records it found that the electricity meter was in good working order and had not been tampered with. The additional bills reflected the actual consumption at the supermarket.
If Mr Spiteri was not ordered to pay the additional bills he would be deriving an unjust advantage from the errors made by the staff in the readings and the inputting of the collected data, it argued.
Mr Spiteri insisted that he would be prejudiced if he were ordered to pay the additional bills because they constituted an expense which he, in his capacity as a businessman, had not budgeted for.
Madam Justice Schembri Orland ruled that the errors in the original bills were the responsibility of the two corporations because Mr Spiteri had no control over the procedure of meter reading, reporting of the readings and the issue of the bills. This was done by the corporations’ employees. WSC could not evade responsibility by claiming that it was acting as an agent for Enemalta
The court concluded that Mr Spiteri did not owe any additional payments to the corporations for the period in question. Enemalta and WSC were also ordered not to disconnect the electricity supply to the supermarket or to Mr Spiteri’s home.