FarmerJ,Did you learn WHY the power went off again ? was it a car/ truck that hit a pole ? did a snownado rip up trees in the area and throw them into the lines breaking them ? Honestly I cant think of a single thing you can say to a judge that would gain you any sympathy because A judge is likely to ask you what steps you took to reduce the damage that could happen from your refusal to drain plumbing . I personally have never heard of any utility promising un interrupted services to its customers , if your city water mains that your house connected to broke out under the street (not the line to your home ) , yes the city has to fix it , No they don't owe you any special compensation because of it. if the natural gas lines under the streets erupt /break and your neighborhood has no natural gas to run every ones boilers or furnaces does your natural gas co the customers who went with out service any special compensation due to freeze up from gas customer who refused to go beg / borrow portable electric heaters from friends /family , or refused to go buy portable electric heaters? As mad as you are , you are free to try to sue the electric company , but I think you will be more mad when your claim is denied ( reconsider suing and instead use the money to help with down payment on a generator system that comes on automatically when the power goes off and look at ones that are fueled by propane tank on your property since you wouldn't have to worry about natural gas being disrupted too. Best of wishes to you no matter what path you follow in regard to this problem.
The power went out due to wind blowing. That is it! No storm. No snow. No car/truck hit. Mere wind. And, it was a mild, windy day. That is all it takes to disrupt electric power service to my home. Simple wind. I have a lot of answers for the judge. I will tell him that we have a fireplace as a backup heating source. However, the limited wood source became depleted over the course of the storm, due to the long outage. As I mentioned earlier, I do have a generator which was working fine when I last checked it in the warm autumn days prior to this cold winter spell. The generator failed. Thank you for your well wishes. I am going to court. The electric company that serves my home is sub-par and the legislator I spoke with told me he receives many complaints about them. Maybe by taking them to court I will elicit change in the way they treat me. I am sure they will not want me to repeat my action of taking them to court over and over again every time I have an outage. Suppose you were in my shoes and you tried everything you suggested to me to do and things were not working out well for you. Suppose you also took the electric company to court. What would you say to the judge? I would be very interested in knowing this. How would you try to win to get the power company to pay? Thanks again.