Many Houstonians were again left outraged at the city’s sole energy provider Centerpoint Energy after Tropical Storm Beryl, which originally hit the Texas coast as a Category 1 hurricane, left more than 2.7 million without power for days. A wide range of public figures, from elected officials like Houston Mayor John Whitmire and Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, to Houston personalities like Mattress Mack, admonished the company for leaving people without electricity in extreme heat. A graffiti artist’s “Centerpointless” scrawling on an underpass summed up many residents’ sentiments. Restaurant owners — many that went longer than a week without power, losing tens of thousands of dollars in income and product as a result — too, were fed up.
For those who were similarly left powerless by a derecho that hit the city in May, it seemed like deja vu. Now, dozens of restaurants are suing.
Mechelle Tran and chef Ryan LaChaine, the partners behind Midtown restaurant Riel, were one of the first to pursue legal action against Centerpoint. LaChaine texted Houston attorney Tony Buzbee, hoping to hold the company accountable. Soon after, Buzbee says Ronnie Killen, the restaurateur behind Killen’s BBQ, reached out. It wasn’t long before Buzbee says his phone was filled with messages from restaurants around the region. Now, more than 200 restaurants in the Houston and Galveston areas have joined a multi-million dollar lawsuit, and according to Buzbee, the number of restaurants keeps growing.
The lawsuit, filed on July 15, names multiple major hospitality groups and restaurants that lost power for at least 48 hours, including Fung’s Kitchen, Picos, and Berg Hospitality, which has B.B.’s Italia, Benny Chows, and the newly opened Turner’s Cut in its portfolio. Though only 15 hospitality groups and restaurants are named, the filing states that it is on behalf of thousands of restaurants in the region that “ultimately remained without power as a result of the incompetence and gross negligence” of Centerpoint.
“Restaurants shouldn’t have to face situations where they’re without power for eight days of business, and this is a unique situation where we rely 100 percent on Centerpoint. If we were to fail to pay our bill, [Centerpoint will] cut us off in a heartbeat, but we rely on them, and they shrug their shoulders,” Buzbee says.
Buzbee and the restaurant owners argue that Centerpoint, which makes more than $6.5 billion annually, did not adequately invest in infrastructure, inspect and maintain equipment, put necessary policies in place, nor hire and train enough employees ahead of the storm despite knowing the Houston area endures active storm seasons each year that experts predict will only worsen.
“CenterPoint’s failure to prepare is inexcusable. CenterPoint knew the storm would lead to mass power outages if not appropriately addressed beforehand, yet it failed to do so. Despite the hurricane being detected two weeks before landfall, CenterPoint Energy did not stage all available repair crews in the Houston area beforehand,” the lawsuit states.
Buzbee also claims in the lawsuit that Centerpoint only purported to be prepared for the hurricane and misled residents by falsely stating that thousands of workers were ready to respond to expected outages. In the lawsuit, he states that Centerpoint published an inaccurate (“lying”) outage map that displayed areas as having restored power even though they did not, and included screenshots of the Whataburger app, showing that some desperate residents used the fast food chain’s restaurant locator to map outages in the city.
A representative for CenterPoint said the company would not comment on pending litigation.
If successful, Buzbee says the lawsuit could recover at least $100 million in total — an arbitrary amount that he says will likely increase as more restaurants join the lawsuit, particularly should it be granted class-action status. The money would help compensate restaurants for the disruption to their businesses and financial losses, including lost income, profits, and losses due to physical damages. Houston restaurateur Ben Berg told Chron.com that he would use a portion of the money recovered from the lawsuit to compensate his workers for their lost wages and tips. But Buzbee says taking legal action against Centerpoint is more so about forcing the company to be accountable. “Ben Berg and these restaurants don’t make money in filing lawsuits. They make money with good customer service, so for them to step forward and lead a lawsuit like this, it means they had right about enough.” Buzbee says.
This will not be the first lawsuit of its kind for Houston. Buzbee filed a similar case during the 2021 ice storm, during which Houston residents experienced days without power due to a power grid failure, and the lawyer says he’s collected nearly $100 million from Centerpoint over the years, specifically for failure to prepare for natural disasters or to properly protect residents from power lines that were down. A lawsuit by residents and another by local businesses, both filed in July against Centerpoint, are also petitioning to have class-action status.
“We’re not going to move on. We’re going to keep the pressure on,” Buzbee says. We’re going to figure out why this happened.”
