SAN ANTONIO – Two residents injured in a North Side house explosion have filed a new joint lawsuit against CPS Energy, days after pulling their original lawsuit.
Six days after the explosion, Mayte Terrie Reeves and Jose Ochoa first filed a lawsuit against the utility on April 27.
Recommended Videos
Their home was the second to explode on April 21 along Preston Hollow Drive, which is located near Thousand Oaks Drive. The San Antonio Fire Department said the explosions were likely related to a natural gas buildup.
Two days after the April 27 filing, court records show Reeves and Ochoa nullified the suit and sought a different law firm to represent them.
The residents officially filed their new lawsuit on Tuesday afternoon, according to documents obtained by KSAT Investigates. Lyons & Simmons, LLP, a Dallas-based law firm, now represents Reeves and Ochoa.
Lyons & Simmons, LLP is the same firm that took on the lawsuit of an East Side family injured in a 2021 house explosion. Last year, a Bexar County jury ordered CPS Energy to pay the family $109 million in damages.
A CPS Energy spokesperson later said the utility only paid the East Side family $3 million.
‘Entirely preventable’
In the new lawsuit, filed in Bexar County’s 131st Civil District Court, lawyers representing Reeves and Ochoa said they were in their home in the 15000 block of Preston Hollow Drive when another home exploded two houses down the street from them.
After the first explosion, the residents evacuated their home due to “the risk of escaped natural gas in the area” before they “were told it was safe to return home,” the lawsuit states.
Reeves and Ochoa returned to their home. Approximately two-and-a-half hours after the first house explosion, the Reeves and Ochoa home exploded and burst into flames due to a “natural gas leaking from CPS Energy’s gas distribution pipeline,” according to the lawsuit.
Their lawyers claim the explosion at their home was “entirely preventable.”
“Though Plaintiffs (Reeves and Ochoa) survived, the Explosion and resulting fire left them catastrophically injured and permanently scarred,” the suit alleges. “They face a long, painful road ahead and their lives have been irreparably altered.”
As a result of the explosion, the victims are requesting a jury trial and are seeking $1 million each in damages.
Lawyers are also accusing CPS Energy of being negligent by “failing to hire, equip, and train competent and skilled workers” to safely operate its natural gas system around the home.
“CPS Energy had actual, subjective awareness of the risk but proceeded with a conscious indifference to the rights, safety, or welfare of others,” the lawsuit states. “CPS Energy’s conduct, acts, and/or omissions, singularly or in combination with others, constituted gross negligence which proximately caused the Explosion and Plaintiffs’ injuries and damages.”
As of Tuesday, Reeves and Ochoa remain hospitalized at Brooke Army Medical Center.
Yet another CPS Energy lawsuit
Tuesday’s lawsuit is the second filed against CPS Energy in as many days.
In the separate suit, filed on May 4, a San Antonio-area couple is suing the utility and two electrical equipment companies after a transformer explosion damaged their home and seriously injured both earlier this year.
Johnny and Irene Sanchez, similar to Reeves and Ochoa, are seeking more than $1 million in damages from CPS Energy, KBS Electrical Distributors Inc., and JSHP Transformer USA Corporation.
The explosion happened on Feb. 8 at their home in the 1000 block of Fillmore Drive in far west Bexar County, according to their lawsuit.
Read more reporting on the KSAT Investigates page.