CW: Child Loss
Texas power providers, the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) and Energy Corporation have been slammed with a $100 million lawsuit accusing the company of gross negligence in the death of an 11-year-old child whose family suspects that he suffered from hypothermia after the mobile home he lived in lost electricity and heat during the recent power grid failure that Texans are still recovering from.
Maria Pineda, the mother of decedent Cristian Pineda, has filed the wrongful death suit alleging that the utility companies "put profits over the welfare of people" when they ignored recommendations to winterize the power grid. The most recent polar vortex caused an epic power grid failure leaving more than four million Texans without heat and electricity for two days as temperatures in some parts of the state plunged to single digits.
According to the lawsuit, Cristian died last Tuesday in his family's mobile home in a Houston suburb while trying to stay warm under a pile of blankets with his three-year-old brother. The family found him unresponsive and attempted CPR while calling 911. The family believes that Cristian died as a result of hypothermia, but await the results of his autopsy for the official cause of death.
The lawsuit contends that ERCOT caused customers to believe that the blackouts would merely be temporary, so they stayed in the area and failed to properly prepare for the winter storm. It also notes that ERCOT ignored recommendations from the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the North American Electric Reliability Corporation to shore up the power grid in case of a severe storm like this. The federal report, issued in 2011, found that state officials had previously "issued a number of recommendations aimed at improving winterization on the part of the generators." Although the recommendations were not mandatory, implementation of the recommendations lapsed over time.
Editor's Note: At the time of this writing, more than 70 deaths have been attributed to the storm. More than a dozen were people, including Cristian, who perished in homes that had lost heat. As for insurance implications, there will be a duty to defend under a liability policy in a wrongful death case. The power company's inability to provide service that causes illness and property damage claims could result in insurance implications. If the utility companies had followed regulatory recommendations in the past, these losses would not have occurred. Businesses can purchase off-premises utility service coverage which provides coverage for property damage due to an interruption of utility services from off the insured premises.