A Lewis County Superior Court judge has dismissed a $13 million lawsuit against the Lewis County Public Utility District (PUD) over a plan to install new, advanced metering infrastructure for roughly 30,000 connections.
On Friday, Judge James Lawler dismissed the lawsuit filed by Glenoma residents William and Alice Budd without prejudice, meaning the Budds could refile their suit if they choose to do so.
Following the hearing, Alice Budd said she was undecided on whether she would refile the lawsuit. The Budds represented themselves during the hearing.
Filed on April 10, the lawsuit made broad allegations and accused the PUD of having nefarious motivations for the new meters. The suit, however, was dismissed on procedural grounds before the court considered the veracity of the allegations. Still, Budd had one request for Lawler during the hearing.
“Here I am in front of the judge, and I just want to ask one thing, which is, ask them to take this meter that’s poisoning me off my house,” Budd said during the proceedings. “I have nowhere else to live, and it’s not asking too much.”
In a filing, a lawyer for PUD noted that the “electrical meter currently installed at the (Budds) residence is a digital meter that does not have radio transceiver functionality.”
“In other words, it is an older type of meter that preceded the PUD’s use of AMR meters and does not transmit radio frequency electromagnetic energy,” the May 22 filing states.
While the couple alleged that they have developed negative health effects since a new meter was installed “sometime in late 2023 or early 2024,” a lawyer representing the PUD wrote on May 22 that the Budds “offered no evidence of any kind linking the presence of this meter to the claimed health effects.”
“Plaintiffs assert the existence of a video taken by a ‘friend’ allegedly showing emissions generated by the existing meter,” the lawyer wrote. “This video is not evidence. There is no evidence at all (especially including competent, scientific evidence) linking this alleged proof of radiation emissions to the alleged adverse health effects.”
The lawyer again noted that the Budds do not currently have a new meter that the PUD is installing throughout its service area.
Though the AMI meters the PUD plans to install use radio frequency, it produces small amounts of radiation. AMI meters only transmit for one and a half seconds every two to four hours. A cordless home phone generates 1,000 times more radio frequency, while cellphones generate 10,000 times more exposure to radio frequency than the new meters, according to previous reporting by The Chronicle.
The new meters are free to customers, though residents can opt out of the installation for a monthly fee that covers staff costs. Installation began in October and will be completed later this year, according to previous reporting by The Chronicle.
The PUD maintains a website page for frequently asked questions at https://www.lcpud.org/account-services/advanced-metering-infrastructure-ami/.
In the suit, the Budds asked for $3 million in compensatory damages and an additional $10 million in punitive damages due to “egregious dishonesty, lack of transparency and failure to inform” customers of the “real motives” of a plan to install new electronic meters throughout the county.
The lawsuit alleged the new meters could be part of a “worldwide agenda” to implement a smart grid, which could serve as a “Trojan horse.” In their complaint, the Budds said the option to turn off the radio transceiver in the new meter did not “resolve the conflict.” The Budds also declined an offer to disconnect from the power grid. In the complaint, the Budds allege the $25 monthly fee to manually read the meters equates to extortion.
In response, a lawyer for the PUD stated the claims were broad and unsubstantiated.
“The complaint is replete with allegations that have no clear connection to any cause of action, such as the existence of a ‘social credit’ system in China or Canada, or the theory that COVID-19 vaccinations are ‘gene therapy,’” a lawyer for the PUD wrote in a motion to dismiss. “For the PUD to respond to all of these allegations that have no apparent connection to an identifiable legal theory or the actual gravamen of the plaintiff’s dispute with PUD is burdensome and wasteful of the parties’ resources.”
