Texas restaurants sue utility CenterPoint over response to Hurricane Beryl

By Arathy Somasekhar

HOUSTON (Reuters) - Restaurants in Houston and nearby regions on Monday filed a class action lawsuit, collectively seeking over $100 million, against U.S. power producer CenterPoint Energy Inc for lack of power following Hurricane Beryl.

About 2.3 million homes and businesses of CenterPoint's customers lost power last week after Hurricane Beryl ripped out trees and knocked down electricity infrastructure. About 130,000 continued to remain without power on Tuesday, eight days after the hurricane.

The extent of the outages and the long restoration time periods frustrated Texans, who questioned CenterPoint's preparedness to tackle damages from the storm. CenterPoint is the state's largest power provider.

The restaurants include Trattoria Sofia, B.B. Lemon, The Annie Cafe & Bar and Killen's, according to the class action petition.

Tony Buzbee, a lawyer who ran for Houston city council last year, said in an Instagram post the case makes claims for negligence and gross negligence for "CenterPoint's repeated failure to do what any reasonable and competent electricity provider would do and should do."

The case alleges that CenterPoint has failed for years to invest in infrastructure, to inspect, maintain and upgrade equipment and to train personnel.

It also alleges that the utility has failed to have a competent storm plan in place and failed to adequately respond to the storm once it impacted the area, Buzbee said.

CenterPoint said it remains focused on restoration efforts, adding that the company does not comment on potential litigation.

(Reporting by Arathy Somasekhar in Houston, Editing by Franklin Paul)