TREY WILSON OBTAINS TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER AGAINST WATER COMPANY ON BEHALF OF ELDERLY CLIENTS

LOS FRESNOS SENIORS SUE EAST RIO HONDO WATER and OBTAIN TEMPORARY RESTRAINING ORDER RE-INSTATING WATER SERVICE

SUIT ALLEGES WATER DISCONNECTED IN RETALIATORY MANNER

Long-time Los Fresnos residents Carl and Janel Parker filed suit on Thursday against the East Rio Hondo Water Supply Corporation (ERHWSC) for a variety of claims arising out of the rural utility’s interruption of their water service. The elderly couple have been without water to their home since ERHWSC officials cut them off on August 13, based upon a disagreement over the appropriate location of an easement requested by the utility. The Parkers, have refused to give the utility what they call and “unreasonable and overly burdensome” easement across their property, which abuts FM 510. According to the Parker family’s attorney, Trey Wilson of San Antonio, the service interruption was made “purely in retaliatory fashion for the purpose of extorting compliance with a ridiculous easement request.” Judge Leonel Alejandro apparently agreed, and entered a Temporary Restraining Order commanding ERHWSC to restore water service to the couple until both sides can be heard in court on September 4.
Wilson, whose law practice largely involves representing water utilities, maintains that the Parkers have never missed a payment for water service, and have always been willing to give the utility a “reasonable and appropriate easement, but that hasn’t been good enough.” Instead, he alleges, ERHWSC terminated the Parker’s water service in violation of the Texas Water Code and Texas Commission on Environmental Quality’s (TCEQ) Rules, based upon “a flimsy argument arising from a poorly drafted service agreement.” The Parkers claim that ERHWSC has breached the agreement and intentionally inflicted severe emotional distress upon them as punishment for refusing the requested easement. They have asked the Court to interpret the service agreement, and issue a permanent injunction against the utility’s impairment of their water service.
The Parkers have worked and ranched in the Los Fresnos area for almost 75 years, and have been 14 year customers of the utility. Their water service was initially interrupted on August 31, but restored the next day after Wilson fired-off a letter warning of possible litigation and a request for TCEQ intervention. When the utility was unsuccessful in persuading the Parkers to grant the requested easement, their water service was terminated on August 13, and not restored until the utility was served with the TRO on Friday. Judge Alejandro will decide on September 4 whether to extend the TRO into a Temporary Injunction which would prevent the utility from interrupting the Parkers’ service until the case goes to trial. Wilson stated that he anxiously awaited his chance to demonstrate to the Court “the illegality of the utility’s vindictive attack on the health, safety and welfare of these elderly people,” and noted that ERHWSC had picked the “wrong family” to extort. “ The whole family has rallied around their parents and grandparents, Carl and Janel. ERHWSC better know Carl Parker is one tough hombre – as a young man he rode bulls and broncs, and served in the army. As an older man he’s recently whipped prostate cancer and survived being gored by an errant cow. Shutting off his water doesn’t bring him to his knees – it only makes him more ornery.”