The 136-Day Ordeal

I. The Erasure

On September 19, 2025, Florida Power & Light didn't just turn off the lights at 3111 F Street.

They deleted a person.

Without a phone call. Without a signature. Without a single human being looking another human being in the eye and saying "we're shutting your power off", FPL's system generated a "Stop Service" request on September 18th and executed it the next day. A keystroke on a server called mid-prod7 erased four years of on-time payments, four years of perfect standing, four years of a woman's proof that she existed as a customer in good faith.

Rachel Renee Davis went from "valued customer" to "non-person" between clock cycles.

• September 18: FPL's server processes a "Stop Service" request. No phone call. No authorization. Nothing. 📎 EX-0025
• September 19: FPL disconnects the power. The lights go out at 3111 F Street.
• September 29, eleven days later: FPL sends the notification email. Subject: "FPL: Your request to stop service." SMTP headers prove: Date: Mon, 29 Sep 2025 10:09:27 -0700. 📎 EX-0023

They cut the power on the 19th and didn't tell the customer until the 29th. For eleven days, Rachel lived without electricity and didn't even know why. She couldn't contest a "request" she never made because FPL hadn't told her it existed yet.

The account wasn't just suspended, it was terminated. FPL reclassified a 4-year loyal customer as a "New Applicant." To get the lights back on, they demanded a $2,300 deposit, a ransom for the privilege of buying back their own identity.

And the proof that Rachel was truly erased came three months later. A balance inquiry from FPL Account Management, with a balance of $15,100.00 and $6,766.26 past due. Buried in the billing details:

"Last bill issued on 01/01/1900."

January 1st, 1900. 01/01/1900 is what a database prints when the date field is NULL, when the system cannot find a record. FPL's own billing system was telling anyone who looked that it had no valid history of when Rachel's last bill was issued. The 4-year billing history had been wiped so completely that the system defaulted to the beginning of time. 📎 EX-0067

And yet, with no valid billing history, FPL was demanding $15,100.00.

II. The Dark

The power went out on a Thursday.

For the next 136 days, Rachel Davis and Brandon Zidzik lived inside a house that was no longer a home. It was a shell. A concrete box with no heat, no light, no refrigeration, and no connection to the world that continued to spin outside.

What 136 days without power actually looks like:

The food goes first. Everything in the refrigerator. Everything in the freezer. Then the silence, the total, heavy absence of every hum and click and whir you never noticed until they stopped. The house doesn't sound like a house anymore. It sounds like a tomb.

Then the dark comes. Not nighttime dark. Not "the power flickered" dark. The kind of dark where you can't find the bathroom. The kind of dark where you trip over things in your own home. The kind of dark that starts to feel personal, like the darkness was built specifically for you by people in offices who have never lived without light.

The January 2026 Arctic Blast pushed temperatures to 20°F in Panama City. Inside the house, the house with no heat, no power, no functional anything, you could see your own breath.

The only thing between Rachel Davis and hypothermia was a borrowed generator. A Generac loaner that screamed through the night like an industrial drill, because silence meant death. Brandon made 2:00 AM fuel runs to Cefco in freezing rain, because the generator drank gasoline constantly, without gratitude, and with no intention of ever giving anything back.

$2,435.51 in fuel. That's what it costs to not freeze to death in America when your utility company decides you don't exist anymore.

The Generac wasn't the only loaner. There was a Kubota too. Both borrowed. Both run into the ground by 136 days of continuous operation they were never designed for. Both destroyed.

And while all of this was happening, FPL could have fixed it in an afternoon. They claimed they couldn't restore power because of a "locked gate." The same property they disconnected from the street pole, without going through the gate, they now claimed they couldn't reconnect because of the gate.

In their formal response to the PSC, Senior Customer Advocate Jordan Summerlin escalated this lie into something extraordinary. FPL claimed there was "signage at the property indicating that the gate is electrified." No such sign exists. The property has two signs: a standard Trespass/Keep Out sign, and an Automatic Moving Gate, Warning sign, which warns people not to be struck by the mechanically moving gate. FPL, a company staffed by licensed electricians, told a state regulatory agency that a mechanical gate warning sign proved the gate was electrified. That is not a misreading. That is a fabrication filed under oath.

III. The Lie

While Rachel froze, FPL was building a story.

The official account was that the meter had been "tampered with." Meter #9137018, the device that measured Rachel's power usage for four years, was now evidence of a crime she allegedly committed.

FPL claimed tampering to justify the $15,100.00 bill. Tampering meant the 12-month back-billing cap didn't apply. Tampering meant they could bill 18 months, an extra $2,600 charged to a woman who hadn't had electricity in four months.

There was one problem with the tampering story: it was a lie.

On January 21, 2026, three FPL technicians arrived at 3111 F Street. They inspected the hardware. And what they found wasn't tampering. 📎 EX-0051R

• The security seal was INTACT. Undisturbed. Unbroken. No evidence of unauthorized access.
• The meter display had suffered an INTERNAL HARDWARE FAILURE. The device broke on its own.

Under Florida Administrative Code Rule 25-6.103, when a meter fails from hardware error with intact seals, the utility can only back-bill for 12 months, approximately $5,400. FPL was overcharging by roughly $2,600.

But FPL didn't correct the bill. They kept the $15,100.00 balance. They kept the tampering allegation. They kept the lie. Because the lie was worth $2,600 more than the truth.

IV. The Referee Who Wouldn't Referee

When you file a complaint with the Florida Public Service Commission, you're supposed to get a referee. Someone neutral. Someone whose job is to stand between the citizen and the corporation.

Rachel got Vince Williams.

On Day 1, Brandon formally invoked Rule 25-6.059: the consumer's right to witness a refereed meter test. Written, timestamped, delivered. Not ambiguous. Not implied.

What followed was not negligence. It was choreography.

February 12–16: Brandon requested the Meter Shop address five times in writing. The PSC didn't respond. FPL didn't respond. The address was treated like a state secret.

February 17, 9:30 AM: At the Meter Shop, whose address had been withheld for five days, FPL and the PSC conducted a secret bench test of Meter #9137018. No consumer present. No witness. 📎 EX-0060

February 17, 1:30 PM: Brandon stood at the gate for eight hours. A white PSC truck drove slowly past the property and did not stop. The referee performed a drive-by and ghosted him.

February 18: The PSC invited Brandon to witness a test, not of the disputed meter, but of the current house meter. The one that was working. The shell game. 📎 EX-0061 📎 EX-0062

Brandon rejected it in writing: "A test of a working meter today cannot validate the $8,000 bill from a failed meter tested in secret yesterday."

The evidence was spoiled. The referee became a co-conspirator. The consumer was the only person excluded from the proceeding that would determine whether his family owed $8,000.

V. The Weight That Stays

The lights came back on. But the weight didn't lift.

$15,100.00 and climbing, still sits on the account. It prevents restoration of credit. It blocks orderly management of the estate property. Every FPL email is a gut punch. Every automated bill notification is a reminder that the system was built to protect the utility, not the person.

Every time Rachel sees an FPL truck, there is a physical reaction. Not curiosity. Not indifference. Fear. The kind of learned, visceral fear that comes from watching a company with the power to delete you exercise that power without consequence.

Summary of Damages