Five years after filing a lawsuit against Southern California Edison, Redondo Beach resident Simona Wilson won a million-dollar judgment Monday over claims that the utility subjected her to what one physician described as “recurrent electrocution” due to stray voltage in her Redondo Beach home.
Jurors at a Long Beach courthouse awarded Simona Wilson $1.2 million in damages in her suit against Edison. The panel of twelve announced the verdict in the afternoon after hearing closing arguments that morning, returning after approximately three hours of deliberation.
As of noon Tuesday, Edison was still studying the verdict and deciding whether to appeal, said Lois Pitter-Bruce, a spokesperson for the utility.
Wilson filed her original claim against Edison in 2011 after being subjected to a current of electricity running through her body in a shower in her home. She subsequently experienced a variety of ill health effects, including nausea, headaches and severe pain in her limbs. In 2013 jury trial, she won a $4 million judgment, but the result was overturned by an appellate court, leading to this week’s judgment.
Lars Johnson, Wilson’s attorney in each of the trials, said the result was a testament to the persistence of his client.
“We as lawyers sometimes try to give ourselves too much credit,” Johnson said after the verdict was announced. “We won because we were on the right side, and because jurors saw how courageous [Wilson] was.”
Wilson’s former home, near the intersection of Knob Hill and Prospect avenues, sits next to the Topaz substation, an Edison facility designed to step down higher-voltage electricity carried on power lines, for use by residents in the neighborhood. Topaz, like other power substations, was grounded, meaning that electric current returning from homes to the substation made contact with the earth.
Grounding is a safety measure required by California regulations. It is designed to protect people from sudden surges of electricity that might result from a downed wire or lightning strike. A side effect of this grounding is “stray voltage,” which both Wilson and Edison agreed was responsible for the current running through Wilson’s shower.
The two parties departed dramatically from there. Wilson claimed that Edison made no real effort to resolve the problem until after she had left her home, while the utility said that it offered a simple fix to the problem, which Wilson refused.
In his closing argument, Johnson said that Edison’s claim could not withstand scrutiny, given the extent of the changes Edison made in the neighborhood after Wilson moved out. These included installing a dedicated transformer and the installation of plastic piping on a Knob Hill gas main. The latter required digging up a significant length of asphalt.
Additionally, Johnson pointed to evidence elicited throughout the trial, showing Wilson’s home’s troubled history with electricity. Previous residents going back to the 1990s had also experienced shocks.
“Why then for decades was this a problem?” Johnson said. ““This company has all the resources in the world. If it was so easy, then why is it they never fixed it?”
Edison lawyers conceded that the sensation Wilson experienced was unwanted, but that it had to be measured against the limitations inherent in electricity distribution, and take into account things Wilson allegedly could have done to avoid it.
“That doesn’t mean Edison wants its customers to feel a slight tingling when they touch a shower. That’s unacceptable,” said Steve Kristovich, a partner at Munger, Tolles and Olson, who served as Edison’s lead counsel in the case. “But that doesn’t mean it’s a nuisance under the law.”
Wilson was prevailed for the second time on her nuisance claim by describing the stress and anxiety that the stray voltage caused her and her three young children. At one point before abandoning the home, Wilson had covered the home’s door knobs and appliances with duct tape to protect herself and her children from being shocked.
Wilson’s damages this time were significantly less than in the 2013 victory because the appellate court dismissed some of the claims on which she had originally prevailed. In the previous case, the jury had found for Wilson on nuisance as well as intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence. The jury also awarded $3 million in punitive damages, which Wilson was ineligible to seek this time.
In a February 2015 opinion, the California Court of Appeal dismissed the intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligence claims in part because it said that Wilson did not provide medical evidence showing that the experience of stray voltage on her property caused the various ailments from which she suffered. One of Wilson’s doctors, who was expected to testify on her behalf, changed his mind about testifying one week before the previous trial began.
Such limitations will likely not be present in a looming companion case, under which many of Wilson’s neighbors are suing Edison. That suit is much larger, with 108 plaintiffs, and is expected to feature extensive testimony from medical experts.
Matt Girardi, a lead attorney on the neighbors’ case, expects trial to begin by the end of the year. He said that ill health effects like those experienced by Wilson have occurred throughout the neighborhood.
“All the way up to that bend, and all the way down past the school,” Girardi said in an interview near the Topaz substation, gesturing east, then west. “Pretty much every single house is a client.”
Johnson, Wilson’s attorney, said that by being the first to take on Edison, Wilson was an inspiration to fellow Knob Hill residents, some of whom sat in the audience for portions of Wilson’s trial.
“I feel really, really happy for my client, and for the other neighbors,” he said. “The people there are worried about their future. I hope this is going to help them.”
