$450 Million Wrongful Death Suit: Eversource Ignored Gas Leak for Three Years Before Fatal Maynard Explosion

On the afternoon of September 2, 2021, Greg Sharrigan, a 67-year-old retired electrician, went to the basement of his home at 27 Park Street in Maynard, Massachusetts, and flipped on a light. The switch ignited a natural gas explosion that destroyed the house and killed him. Two police officers and a firefighter who responded to the scene were hospitalized, though all recovered.

The source of the gas was a corroded underground main owned by Eversource that had been leaking for years. Gas had migrated through the soil and accumulated beneath the crawl space before igniting, according to the lawsuit and state regulatory findings.

What compounded the loss was what Eversource knew well before the explosion. The company had detected a gas leak approximately 40 feet from the Sharrigan home in 2018, three years before Sharrigan died. Between 2018 and 2020, its crews identified additional leaks in the same neighborhood. Despite this, the company failed to assign the relevant leak its own tracking number as required by its own safety protocols. The result: the leak was confused with others nearby, its location was recorded incorrectly, and no repair was ever made.

In August 2024, Carol Sharrigan, Greg's widow, filed a wrongful death complaint against Eversource in Middlesex County Superior Court, seeking $450 million in compensatory and punitive damages on behalf of the family. J. Tucker Merrigan of Sweeney Merrigan Law brought the suit, describing the case as a failure to act on documented hazards. "Eversource detected the underground gas leak years before it killed Greg Sharrigan, but then didn't do anything about it," Merrigan told reporters.

The complaint alleges that Eversource's record-keeping failures obscured how dangerous the pipe near Park Street had become, and that the company directed resources toward more profitable maintenance work rather than the deteriorating main. Carol Sharrigan said at filing that she hoped the lawsuit would draw attention to practices extending beyond her husband's case: "The public needs to know that Eversource has been cutting corners and putting lives at risk."

Eversource denied wrongdoing, calling the 2021 explosion "an isolated, tragic accident" and stating it "strongly disputes the assertions" in the complaint. No settlement or verdict had been publicly reported as of coverage.