Ohio Jury Holds Utility Accountable: $6 Million for Fire Death After Downed Line Was Reported

Published May 3, 2022 · Verdicts & Settlements

When you call the power company to report a line pulled down by a storm, you expect someone to come. An 85-year-old Marietta woman made that call, was told help was on the way, and died in a fire in her home that night. On April 15, 2022, a Washington County jury found the utility responsible and awarded her family $6 million.

Marietta is a long way from Dayton, but the lessons of this verdict apply to any Ohio family that has lost someone because a company ignored a hazard it knew about. And they answer one of the most common, and most hurtful, things insurance companies say to grieving families: that an older person's life is not worth much in court.

What happened, as reported

Elsa Thompson was 85 and a longtime Marietta resident, according to WTAP, which reported that she had published the magazine Bird Watchers Digest with her husband. The Cleveland Jewish News reported that she lived alone.

On May 25, 2019, a wind storm brought a branch down onto the service line to her home on Warren Street. According to the Cleveland Jewish News, which interviewed the family's attorney, Jordan Lebovitz, the storm took down branches of an old maple tree in her yard and pulled the power lines down to about six feet above the ground. A neighbor first reported the downed line to AEP around 2 p.m. Mrs. Thompson reported it herself around 5 p.m. and was told someone would be there around 6 p.m. When she called again shortly before 8 p.m., Lebovitz said, she was told that she did not need to worry and that it would be taken care of by morning.

The fire started just before 11 p.m. in her family room, the Cleveland Jewish News reported, and she died from inhaling the products of combustion. The Marietta Times reported that testimony at trial showed the service worker did not arrive for 12 hours, some two hours after the fire started.

The trial and the verdict

The family's lawyers argued that AEP failed to respond to the reports in time, did not prioritize the calls correctly, and had not properly installed or maintained the line, according to WTAP. AEP's lawyers argued that its worker responded to the outages posing the greatest risk to the greatest number of people, that the cause of the fire was never specifically determined, and that Mrs. Thompson bore some responsibility because she could have pruned the tree and did not have a smoke alarm.

After a two-week trial, the jury found that AEP breached the standard of care in its maintenance and inspection of the service line to her home and that this breach was a cause of her injuries and death, the Marietta Times reported. The newspaper listed the jury's awards:

• $2 million for the mental anguish her next of kin had already experienced;
• $1 million for the mental anguish they will experience in the future;
• $75,000 for the loss of her companionship, care, guidance, and counsel since her death, and $250,000 for those losses in the future; and
• $2 million to compensate her estate for the conscious pain and suffering she endured before she died.

That totals $6 million. The jury also assigned 10 percent of the fault to Mrs. Thompson for not having smoke detectors in the home, which, as the family's attorney told the Cleveland Jewish News, reduces the payment to $5.4 million.

Two claims when a death is caused by negligence

The verdict illustrates a structure that applies in every Ohio wrongful-death case.

The wrongful-death claim belongs to the surviving family. Under R.C. 2125.02, the personal representative of the estate brings it for the benefit of the spouse, children, parents, and other next of kin. Recoverable losses include lost financial support and services, the loss of the person's companionship and guidance, lost prospective inheritance, and the survivors' mental anguish. Here, nearly all of the $4 million wrongful-death award was for mental anguish and loss of companionship.

The survival claim belongs to the estate. Under R.C. 2305.21, a claim for injuries to the person survives death, which allows the estate to recover for what the person suffered before dying. In this case, the jury awarded $2 million for Mrs. Thompson's conscious pain and suffering.

We explained how wrongful-death damages are shared among family members in an earlier post, and our wrongful death practice page covers who can bring these claims.

Why the reduction for "fault" did not defeat the case

Ohio uses a comparative-fault system. Under R.C. 2315.33, an injured person's own share of fault does not bar recovery unless it is greater than the combined fault of the defendants, and the award is reduced by the injured person's percentage. AEP argued that Mrs. Thompson should have pruned the tree and installed smoke alarms. The jury assigned her 10 percent and reduced the award accordingly, but it placed 90 percent of the responsibility on the utility that had been told about the hazard and did not fix it in time.

Defendants almost always argue that the victim did something wrong. Our post on comparative negligence explains how that argument is handled, and our guide chapter on what your case is worth explains how fault percentages affect the final number.

What the verdict says about the value of an older person's life

Insurers often value claims for older victims by focusing on economic losses. An 85-year-old woman who lived alone had no paycheck to replace, and adjusters treat that as a reason to offer little. This jury rejected that reasoning. Almost the entire award compensated the human losses: her family's grief, the loss of her presence and counsel, and the suffering she endured in the fire. Ohio's wrongful-death statute recognizes those losses, and a jury that hears who the person was will value them.

The evidence that made the case

The heart of this case was a timeline: when the hazard was reported, what the caller was told, and when the crew arrived. That kind of proof lives in call logs, dispatch records, recorded calls, and crew assignment data. Utilities and other companies keep those records on their own schedules, and they must be preserved quickly. Our guide chapter on gathering evidence while it still exists explains how a preservation letter protects records like these.

What this means for you

If a family member died because a utility, landlord, contractor, or other company failed to act on a hazard it had been told about, the family may have both a wrongful-death claim and a survival claim. The age of the person who died does not erase the value of those claims. What matters is proving what the company knew, when it knew it, and what it failed to do.