• Review the fact pattern found BELOW. You are a paralegal in a law firm that has been retained by the Hanks to determine whether they should proceed with a negligence suit. Using the prompts that follow the fact pattern as guidance, create a client letter to send to the Hanks assessing the strength of their claim. Use https://www.law.cuny.edu/legal-writing/students/client-letter/ to assist you in formatting your letter. Make up the name of your firm, the Hanks address, and the name of the attorney for whom you have drafted the letter.

On the morning of April 3, 2000, a thunderstorm occurred near Lake Bonin in Union County, Minnesota. At 6 a.m., an intense lightning strike from the storm destroyed the electrical transformer serving the lake home of Joe and Sara Hanks, causing a fire that destroyed their home. E-nergy, Inc. ("E-nergy") owned and maintained a transformer and lightning arrester on a pole 90 feet from the plain-tiffs' home. The lightning arrester (also known as a surge arrester), bolted to the transformer, diverts high-voltage surges into the ground. All agreed that the specific surge suppressor was the appropriate protection when lightning struck (about twice a year) and when there were surges along the distribution lines. Lightning arresters can fail because of missing internal parts (some can erode over time as a result of numerous strikes), design flaws, or poor ground connections. This particular transformer had been installed in 1996. An E-nergy engineering manual states that very high current strikes or a strike di-rectly to the lightning arrester could destroy the transformer. E-nergy never re-ceived complaints about it or requests for repairs. E-nergy employees had received instructions to inspect equipment visually when performing their regular duties; there were no specific instructions to inspect the transformers. On April 8, E-nergy employees visited the Hanks home and found that the bottom of the transformer's steel tank had been blown out, damage so severe that it was rarely seen. The transformer showed that the lightning arrester apparently sustained no damage; E-nergy didn't keep the lightning arrester after its worker installed a new transformer when the Hanks house was rebuilt. E-nergy's inves-tigator, who was on the scene, made no effort to preserve the lightning arrester. Do the Hankses have a cause of action? Why or why not? What difficulties seem likely, based upon what's mentioned in this chapter, for the Hankses if they do have a cause of action?