$60.7 Million Settlement for Child Left with Brain Injury After Touching Downed FirstEnergy Power Line

On November 1, 2012, a 12-year-old girl was walking home through her east Cleveland neighborhood when she reached up and touched a downed power line sagging over the sidewalk. The line, owned by Cleveland Electric Illuminating Company (CEI), a FirstEnergy subsidiary, was approximately 60 years old and had been knocked down by the remnants of Hurricane Sandy days earlier. Contact was immediate and catastrophic: she went into cardiac arrest, her hand burned and fused to the wire, and she suffered a profound brain injury along with a partial amputation. Her sister, who was present, witnessed the incident and sustained physical injuries and emotional trauma of her own.

The family filed suit in Cuyahoga County Court of Common Pleas in January 2013, naming First Energy Corporation and Cleveland Electric Illuminating among the defendants. The core of the case was the utility's failure to respond to known danger. Court records show that someone reported the downed, energized wire to FirstEnergy at 8 a.m. the day of the incident and again at 3 p.m., yet repair crews were never dispatched before the child was hurt. Plaintiffs alleged that call logs were deleted before crews were sent.

The city of Cleveland had separately settled for $700,000 over a police officer's failure to stand guard near the wire and redirect pedestrians. The main action against FirstEnergy and CEI proceeded in Cuyahoga County before Judge Janet R. Burnside, with Kline and Specter of Philadelphia serving as co-counsel alongside the local Becker Law Firm team.

In September 2016 the parties reached a total settlement of $60.7 million. Court filings record the allocation: $34 million placed in a trust for the injured child, $4 million to her mother, $400,000 for her sister, more than $821,000 for accumulated medical bills, and approximately $20 million in attorneys' fees. Projected lifetime care costs for the child had been estimated at roughly $23 million, reflecting the severity of her permanent neurological and physical impairments.

The settlement was certified as the largest individual personal injury settlement in Ohio state history. LexisNexis Jury Verdicts records list Romney B. Cullers of The Becker Law Firm as plaintiffs' counsel of record.