City Attorney Mike Feuer filed a major lawsuit after a contractor for the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power mismanaged customer billing, costing the city millions in damages.
Feuer said customers of the utility were overcharged for service because PricewaterhouseCoopers claimed it was more experienced than it really was to implement a $70 million billing system.
"The contract was so poorly pefromed, so pervaded with misrepresentations, that the results were disastrous," Feuer said.
Daniel J. Thomasch, an attorney for PricewaterhouseCoopers, called the lawsuit "meritless," contending it was a "transparent attempt by the DWP to shift blame away" from the utility.
NBC4’s I-team investigated customer complaints of inflated bills and demanded answers from the LADWP.
"We've been advised by the city attorney's office not to speak on camera about this," DWP spokesman Joe Ramallo told NBC4 in February.
The email response from the DWP stated that billing estimates "can occur for a variety of reasons."
One mathematician, Nathan Wells, tracked and calculated his bills to discover he was left with a bill three times what it should be.
"I think the LADWP is worse than the mafia," Wells told the NBC4 I-Team in a previous report. "It's impossible to deal with them."
