As of Friday, 22 small-claims suits had been filed in Warren County against the company.
While complaints keep accumulating against a former Phillipsburg oil company that closed without reimbursing customers' money or delivering their oil, some residents are getting their first crack at recouping some of their losses.
Ten small-claims lawsuits filed against Norton Oil Co. are scheduled to be heard during a hearing Wednesday afternoon in state Superior Court in Belvidere, the first of what is likely to be several legal proceedings ahead for the defunct company.
As of Friday, 22 small-claims suits, reserved for complaints in which the money demand is less than $3,000, had been filed in Warren County against the company, records indicate. During the upcoming hearings, former customers will be given a chance to present their case to a judge or the court will attempt to help settle the case through mediation.
In the meantime, the complaints filed with the Warren County Department of Weights and Measures continue to pile up. Superintendent Michael Santos said Friday his office has received more than 325 complaints since Norton Oil closed in November.
Roughly 245 those have come in the past two weeks, easily the most Santos’ four-person office has received in his nearly 13 years as superintendent. The previous high for a single year was between 70 and 80 complaints, Santos said, or roughly a quarter of the number they have received regarding Norton Oil.
“It’s a lot,” Santos said. “We are really doing it for no other reason except to help the people that need the help and help (the New Jersey Attorney General's Office Division of) Consumer Affairs amass the data.”
Last week, Norton Oil Co., in a letter to its former customers, said that after 70 years in business, "circumstances beyond our control" forced its abrupt closure last month. Customers who prepaid for oil, including a Bethlehem church that laid down $26,000 for its subsidized apartment building, will get neither money nor oil from the Phillipsburg company, Charles Laputka, attorney for company owner Richard Norton, said at the time.
Norton, of Palmer Township, has declined comment.
Laputka said previously that he planned to file for Chapter 7 bankruptcy for Norton in the near future in federal court in Reading. No record of the bankruptcy filing was available in court records Friday afternoon and Laputka did not return a request for comment.
Santos said there are many people working hard to help former customers, including officials in Pennsylvania who say three recipients of the state’s Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program are believed to have been affected by Norton’s closure.
Officials in New Jersey’s Consumer Affairs office continue to collect information and an investigation into Norton Oil's closing is already underway, Laputka said previously. He anticipated the Pennsylvania Attorney General's Office also getting involved.
“All I can say is that people at very high levels, people in the industry and people in the state and in government, are working and doing their best to see what they can do to help these people,” Santos said. “What transpires or comes from that, I don’t know, but there are many, many people doing whatever they can to try and do something positive.”
Still, Santos said he feared there may be some people who are unaware of Norton’s troubles and won’t realize their oil is not coming until it's too late.
Many of the people affected are seniors on fixed incomes who may not have access to all the information available, he said. Santos urged people to check on friends, relatives or neighbors who may have been a Norton customer.
“If you know somebody who is a Norton customer who may not have been exposed to the information up to this point, check with them and make sure they're good with oil and heat,” he said. “That’s the thing I’m most concerned about.”