By AP
Nashville, TN – A federal judge in Nashville has ordered the Tennessee Valley Authority to pay nearly a half-million dollars to a Dickson, Tennessee woman whose husband drowned in a boating accident. Becky Matheny blamed the TVA for her husband's 2005 death. She filed a lawsuit against the agency in 2006, saying a TVA vessel caused Ronald Matheny's small fishing boat to capsize on the Cumberland River in Stewart County. Her husband was fishing with a friend near the TVA Cumberland Fossil Plant when the boat capsized. The widow maintained that the TVA vessel caused a swell in the narrow channel where the men were fishing because the operator was driving too fast. U.S. District Judge Aleta Trauger also awarded a little more than $30,000 to Thomas Lawrence, the friend who was in the boat, and his wife, Johnna.