ST. PETERSBURG, Fla., July 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- On July 16, 2019, in St. Petersburg, Florida, Brandy Broad, the wife of a local tree trimmer who died while trimming trees near power lines on January 11, 2019 sued Duke Energy, Yutzy Tree Service, his supervisor Karl Yutzy, and the two owners of the property where the deadly incident occurred for wrongfully causing her husband, Jason Broad's, death.
Mrs. Broad, who has been court-appointed as the Personal Representative of Jason Broad's Estate has brought numerous legal claims for herself and on behalf of her young son to recover compensation for the wrongful death of her husband and the boy's father, Jason Broad. The lawsuit filed in Pinellas County, Florida circuit court alleges that Duke Energy was negligent in allowing, and not timely removing, the tree branches and limbs to become dangerously entangled in Duke Energy's low hanging, highly energized power lines.
The lawsuit alleges that private property owners, including the Brandywine Apartment Complex in St. Petersburg, Florida's Tyrone area, may have become impatient with Duke Energy's failure to address the tree limb problem and instead hired the Yutzy Tree Service to trim the trees limbs that were entangled with Duke Energy's low hanging power lines.
It is alleged that no permit was obtained from the municipality for the project, which included the positioning of a cherry picker lift on the Brandywine Apartments grounds that was used to lift Jason Broad up above the ground so that he could reach the entangled tree limbs with his power saw. While being elevated by the cherry picker lift, and after Mr. Broad cut a limb with his power saw and was electrocuted and presumed dead immediately thereafter.
The lawsuit alleges that Yutzy Tree Service failed to properly train the deceased Mr. Broad for the fatal job that put him in close proximity to high energy power lines which exposed Mr. Broad to an excessive risk of serious injury or death.
Mrs. Broad alleges that Yutzy Tree Service failed to first notify Duke Energy that her husband would be doing tree trimming work near its power lines. Ms. Broad asserts in her lawsuit that Yutzy's failure to notify Duke Energy about the project before it started, was a legal cause of the death of her husband because the power lines where her husband was working were not temporarily turned off.
The lawsuit further alleges that Mr. Broad's Yutzy supervisor, Karl Yutzy, bears legal responsibility for his actions in subjecting Mr. Broad, who lacked the qualifications to work near power lines, to an excessive risk of serious injury or death by knowingly placing Mr. Broad with a power saw in an uninsulated cherry picker near high energy, low hanging, power lines that were entangled with tree limbs.
The lawsuit does not identify a specific monetary amount being sought other than that Mrs. Broad is seeking an amount for herself and her young son in excess of $15,000 and in variety of different categories including loss of support and services for them. The attorney filing the lawsuit on behalf of the Estate and Mrs. Broad is Wesley T. Straw of Emerson Straw PL in St. Petersburg, FL.
July 16, 2019, St. Petersburg, FL
Wesley T. Straw, Esquire
Emerson Straw PL
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SOURCE Emerson Straw
