BEAUMONT, Texas — A Southeast Texas law firm is suing the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT) in response to the freeze of February 2021.
Brent Coon & Associates is representing a group of people affected by Winter Storm Uri that brought days of below-freezing temperature to Texas.
Some are related to the 246 victims of the storm who died across the state.
This storm became deadly when the majority of the electricity supplied to the ERCOT power grid collapsed.
Brent Coon says ERCOT failed to winterize the power grid system, despite multiple warnings, according to a news release from Brent Coon & Associates.
The firm has filed 4,000 claims, including a class action lawsuit, which could include thousands of more claims in the future.
The Texas grid had major system-wide failures three times before, in December 1989, in February 2011 and in September 2014, according to the release.
Months after the 2021 freeze, Brent Coon & Associates initiated litigation on behalf of a large group of homeowners and businesses against all of the suppliers and distributors to the Texas Electric Grid.
This involved over 200 defendants and law firms and claimants followed suit, according to the release.
The law is representing Randy Turner, whose brother died of hypothermia.
"No wood, no inconvenience, no anxiety, no other thing that comes to mind when thinking about the Texas winter storm of 2021 compared to my dear brother's life was taken," Turner said. "I can fix pipes. I can't fix my brother's life. I can replace wood. I can't replace my brother's life."
The law firm claims the entire industry in Texas chose to ignore those warnings and as a consequence, had the "worst case scenario" with deaths from hypothermia and inability to operate at home health care equipment, frostbite victims and other injuries, according to the release.
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