Opening arguments began Monday in the civil trial of a Longview man who claims a faulty Cowlitz PUD power line shocked and injured him while he worked on his roof last year.

Steven Prothero said he was removing leaves from the gutters of his Kelview Drive home in June of last year when he was hit by a jolt of electricity. The shock was caused by an inadequately insulated PUD power line, said his attorney, Duane Crandall of Longview.

Prothero is suing the PUD for unspecified damages.

Crandall said in Cowlitz County Superior Court on Monday that weather and sunlight deteriorated the insulation protecting power lines in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of well-kept but older homes. The problem, Crandall said, wasn’t limited to the Prothero residence. One of Prothero’s neighbors testified Monday that the power line running to her house burst into flames in 2005.

The PUD let lines in the neighborhood fall “into a state of dangerous disrepair,” Crandall said. “Rather than send out a notice with their monthly billing, rather than sending out crews to do one neighborhood at a time, apparently a cost-benefit analysis must have been made whereby it’s cheaper to pay the Protheros of the world than to make it safe for Cowlitz County electrical customers.”

But Scott Cifrese, a Spokane attorney representing the PUD, questioned whether Prothero touched the PUD line the day he was injured, or whether he was really even shocked.

“They can’t prove anything,” Cifrese said. “They can make grandiose statements, but they have no witnesses whatsoever to prove causation in this matter.”

Cifrese continued: “You’re going to hear an awful lot of the plaintiff talking about how dangerous this condition was. I would submit that the PUD could have put a live, ravenous tiger on the top of Mr. Prothero’s roof, but if it didn’t come in contact with Mr. Prothero, then it didn’t cause him any damages.”

William Vilardi, a Rainier electrician called as an expert witness by the plaintiff, said his review of the situation showed that there was no insulation on the line leading to Prothero’s house. He called it a “very dangerous” situation and said such lines should be inspected at least once a year.

Prothero’s neighbor, Candi Engebo, said that in February of 2005 she heard a “loud explosion” at her house and discovered “the power line from my house to the pole is on fire and flaming and dripping into my yard.” She said a PUD representative told her that all of the lines in the neighborhood, which dates to the 1960s, are old.

“I would have thought as I looked down the street at the aging homes that it all would have been fixed,” she said.

Gisela Dahlquist, another neighbor, testified that she helped Prothero’s wife, Jeanette Prothero, get Prothero off the roof after the incident. He was “very weak” and out of breath, she said.

“I was scared of him dying,” Dahlquist said.

Prothero’s family members, including his sons Ryan and Phil, said that before the accident, Prothero often traveled with his wife and undertook constant home-improvement projects. That, they said, has stopped, largely because the electricity severely damaged Prothero’s right shoulder.

Crandall asked the court to rule that Prothero be paid $2,000 each month for the next 20 years, as well as other unspecified damages, to compensate him for medical care, his injury and pain and suffering.

In an interview outside the courtroom, Clara Prothero, who is married to Prothero’s son, Ryan, said the one thing she hopes the trial forces the PUD to notify customers by mail that they can request to have their power lines inspected.

“Nobody knows that they need to be calling,” she said.

The bench trial, which is being heard by Judge Stephen Warning, is expected to wrap up by the end of the week.

Update: Longview man awarded $51,000 in suit against PUD