A Florida jury has ordered Florida Power & Light to pay nearly $24 million to the family of a 15-year-old San Carlos Park boy who was electrocuted while climbing bamboo near power lines in 2011.

A Lee County court jury decided that Tricia Dominguez, the mother of 15-year-old Justin Dominguez, should receive $8.75 million in compensatory damages and $15 million in punitive damages.

A statement released by FPL spokesman Bill Orlove said the company disagrees with the jury’s decision and was evaluating further legal options.

"We extend our thoughts and prayers to the Dominguez family during this difficult time," the statement said.

Attorneys who represented Dominguez’s mother said FPL had been warned by its own inspectors in 2008 that bamboo near the family’s San Carlos Park home was too close to power lines.

The plants were never removed.

Three years later, the 15-year-old was playing with other children at a neighbor’s home when the bamboo stalk he climbed struck the high-voltage power lines and he sustained catastrophic injuries. He died two weeks later in a hospital after he was declared brain dead and removed from a ventilator.

“FPL had more than ten opportunities, since 2008, to eliminate the danger to the children living adjacent to this 13,000-volt power line, and failed to act each and every time. They broke the law. They broke their own rules. They blamed a boy for climbing a tree, instead of apologizing and trying to stop it from happening again,” said attorney Ty Roland with Aloia, Roland & Lubell, the Fort Myers law firm that handled the case.

During the trial, the jury was shown an FPL work order to remove the bamboo at the exact address from three years before the boy died.

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