'Zapped' Couple's $2.3M Lawsuit: Stray Electricity From Local Power Station Gives Their Home Unwanted Sizzle

ABC News recently reported on "the story of Dr. Harold and Millie Mendelsohn, whose sprawling, six-acre estate in tony Pound Ridge, N.Y., carries an invisible sizzle":

• Their neighbors include actor Richard Gere -- and one humungous power station. Recently, they felt vibrations on their property and Millie Mendelsohn was zapped. "The animals started going crazy on the property," Harold Mendelsohn said, "the horses and the dogs and the cats."
  
  They've long abandoned the pond at their home after the fish died, they avoid the guest house and had the pool emptied. Now, they say, the sizzles spread to their home. Among their reported maladies are intense headaches and a fear so strong, they've turned to using rubber. Harold Mendelsohn has to use rubber sheets to sleep while Millie uses rubber shoes in the shower.
  
  But it is the kitchen she fears most. She won't even touch the faucet for fear of shock.
  
  The Mendelsohns believe the stray power is coming from the power station just beyond the tree line in their backyard. They are suing their local power provider for $2.3 million. The utility said the couple is not entitled to any damages.(1)
  
  When they first moved in more than 20 years ago, the Mendelsohns didn't think the transformer would be a problem. But they estimate it has grown three times the size since.
  
  "It's infuriating," Harold Mendelsohn said. "This was our dream situation, and I wish they could just fix it." "It's just a nightmare," Millie Mendelsohn said. "We just have to leave it empty. Say goodbye to it."(2)

For this and two other home horror stories, see House From Hell: Buyers' Nightmare Homes.

(1) See also the New York Post: Stray-volt ordeal turns Westchester couple’s home into house of horror:

• NYSEG [the local power company] says the couple’s claims “are false” and insists there’s no stray voltage at all. But records show NYSEG has known of the problem for two decades and has tried to fix it by installing voltage blockers near the Mendelsons’ home.
  
  Hal Mendelson, a 76-year-old doctor, forbids visits by anyone with a pacemaker. “The lights go on and off in the house all the time. Appliances burn out. My wife and I both have neurological issues,” he said.

***

• The couple say they euthanized a favorite dog, an English setter named Glory Be, because the voltage made her chew the skin off her legs. “She was the most wonderful dog, and you would cry when you saw her legs,” Millie said. “She was chewing them until they bled. . . . They were like raw meat. They were horrible.”
  
  Hal says the power substation, which was there when they moved into the house in 1987, wasn’t a problem at first — but by 1991 enough voltage was leaking to prod the couple to file their first suit against the company.

(2) For stories on the deadliness of stray electricity/voltage, see:

CBS Evening News: Shocking investigation on stray electricity:

• [L]uckily, most people who touch the metal don't make good enough contact to get seriously hurt. But if you're barefoot -- or wet -- the hazard can be deadly.
  
  It happened to 14-year-old Deanna Green in Baltimore in 2006. Her father Anthony says the ground was wet -- when Deanna touched a park fence at softball practice. Nobody knew it - but the fence was charged by frayed lighting wires buried underneath. 227 volts killed her instantly.
  
  "Never in a thousand years would you think that while you were there, and while your child was standing in front of you - you would lose her in such a manner," says Deanna's mother Nancy. "It's devastating."

South Jersey Times: Baltimore stray electricity: Settlement reached in electrocution death of South Jersey native's daughter:

• A settlement was finally reached between the city of Baltimore and a former Millville High School football star turned Baltimore Colt defensive tackle whose daughter was killed by a stray electric current running through a fence in a city-owned park.