The Supreme Court set a 15-day deadline for the Puerto Rico Electric Power Authority (AEE) and the Public-Private Partnerships Authority (AAPP) to present their position on whether that forum should directly resolve their lawsuits against the private operator of the electrical grid, LUMA Energy.
This, in light of the counterclaims filed by the operator in the forum where the cases currently are, the Court of First Instance.
This reactivation of Puerto Rico's courts in this controversy occurs after Judge Laura Taylor Swain refused to retain jurisdiction over the claims after LUMA failed to get them heard in federal court instead of state court.
The controversy over whether jurisdiction remains alive is before the First Circuit Court of Appeals in Boston, where LUMA has the support of the Financial Oversight and Management Board (FOMB). But while that is resolved, federal courts refused to keep the cases on hold, so they were referred to state court to proceed here.
When that happened, LUMA filed a counterclaim alleging that the government's lawsuits are motivated by electoral political purposes and that Governor Jenniffer González Colón and the suing public corporations have acted in bad faith, with intentional fraud, and recklessly to the total detriment of the public interest.
Following a campaign promise that LUMA would cease to be the private operator of the grid, the government filed two lawsuits that, with some differences in grounds, essentially make the same point: that when the Pierluisi Urrutia administration extended the supplemental contract under which LUMA operates on the island while the AEE bankruptcy concludes, it did so illegally because it lacked the required vote on the AAPP board.
LUMA has called the lawsuits "nonsense," accused the government of acting against its own actions, and warned that contract cancellation would cause costs of $4.5 billion and "chaos" in the electrical grid.
Once the AEE and AAPP respond, the Supreme Court will decide whether to intervene directly in the lawsuits and also whether to consolidate them.
LUMA strengthened its legal team with two former Supreme Court justices, former Chief Justice Federico Hernández Denton and former Associate Justice Edgardo Rivera García. They also advanced that they expect to conduct a broad discovery process in which they identify interventions by the Secretary of Governance, Francisco Domenech Fernández, in the handling of their contract.
