WPRO News and the Associated Press

A legal rights group says National Grid is violating federal and Rhode Island laws by shutting off the utilities of low-income and medically vulnerable individuals.

The nonprofit Rhode Island Center for Justice filed a class action lawsuit Tuesday in Rhode Island Superior Court against the electricity and gas utility as well as the state and its Division of Public Utilities and Carriers, which oversees public utility regulations.

The Center for Justice says National Grid has failed to follow laws that protect low-income or disabled individuals from having their utilities shut off and the state has failed to enforce the laws.

National Grid spokesman David Graves says shutting off service is a last step in a long process of notification to customers.

“National Grid has actually admitted that it doesn’t have a system for receiving those specific requests for serious illness protection,” said Robert McCreanor, Executive Director of the Rhode Island Center for Justice in a news conference across the street from the Providence County Superior Courthouse, just after filing a complaint.

Shane Ward of Pawtucket said the gas and electricity in his elderly mother’s home was shut off in 2014 for non-payment.

“I was given a date that I was going to be shut off. They showed up a week before then and shut us off while my mother was still on a respiratory machine. I asked the guy at the time, ‘please give me a few minutes while I set my mother on the (oxygen) tanks. He would not listen and shut me off. My mother started going into an epileptic fit, I gave her Klonopin to stop it,” said Ward.

Ward is among the lead plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which seeks declaratory and injunctive relief.