The family of Cassius, the dog killed by leaking electricity from an old NStar Electric lamppost site, said last night it had turned down an unspecified offer of "comfort money" from NStar and is demanding $740,000 from the utility or it will sue. The family said it picked the dollar figure because it equals NStar chief executive Thomas J. May's annual salary.
Paul and Dee Dee DeVito of Allston, whose 13-year-old son Kyle was walking Cassius on Western Avenue when the dog was electrocuted last Tuesday, said they had initially demanded $1.4 million, the size of May's most recent annual bonus. The DeVitos agreed to seek the lower figure after NStar balked.
"We didn't want the DeVito family to appear greedy," their lawyer, John G. Swomley, said at a packed press conference last evening where the family disclosed its $740,000 demand.
But, Swomley said, after three dog deaths in Boston since 2000 blamed on so-called stray voltage, the family wants a sufficiently harsh financial sanction to force the utility to get serious about resolving the problem once and for all. "We tried to come up with an offer that had some poetry to it and that would say in very clear terms to NStar: We don't want this to keep happening," Swomley said.
"It is not designed to make the De- Vitos a wealthy family."
After keeping $200,000, plus enough to pay for four years of college for Kyle and his brother Alec, 10, the family would donate the rest of its settlement, Swomley said, to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Rescue League.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/08/dogs_family_demands_740000/
Paul and Dee Dee DeVito of Allston, whose 13-year-old son Kyle was walking Cassius on Western Avenue when the dog was electrocuted last Tuesday, said they had initially demanded $1.4 million, the size of May's most recent annual bonus. The DeVitos agreed to seek the lower figure after NStar balked.
"We didn't want the DeVito family to appear greedy," their lawyer, John G. Swomley, said at a packed press conference last evening where the family disclosed its $740,000 demand.
But, Swomley said, after three dog deaths in Boston since 2000 blamed on so-called stray voltage, the family wants a sufficiently harsh financial sanction to force the utility to get serious about resolving the problem once and for all. "We tried to come up with an offer that had some poetry to it and that would say in very clear terms to NStar: We don't want this to keep happening," Swomley said.
"It is not designed to make the De- Vitos a wealthy family."
After keeping $200,000, plus enough to pay for four years of college for Kyle and his brother Alec, 10, the family would donate the rest of its settlement, Swomley said, to the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals and the Animal Rescue League.
http://www.boston.com/news/local/articles/2005/03/08/dogs_family_demands_740000/