YOUNGSTOWN — More than 50 International Towers tenants filed a lawsuit against the nearby Realty Tower’s owner, tenant, contractor as well as a utility company and others contending they’ve been greatly harmed by being displaced for nearly two months as a result of a negligent gas explosion at Realty.

The lawsuit, filed late Thursday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, also seeks class- action status so all International Towers tenants, about 170 in total, can receive punitive damages.

Judge Maureen Sweeney was assigned the case.

The lawsuit’s defendants are: YO Properties 47 LLC, Realty’s owner; LY Property Management LLC, Realty’s property manager; GreenHeart Companies, which was doing the gas-line work when the May 28 explosion occurred at the building; Enbridge Gas Ohio LLC, the area’s natural gas company; Dominion Energy LLC, which used to be the area’s gas company; and five unnamed “John Does,” who did the work for GreenHeart when the explosion happened.

International Towers tenants were forced to evacuate by June 14, four days after Youngstown city officials got a structural engineering report stating all buildings within a 210-foot radius of Realty Tower, heavily damaged in the explosion, should be closed because they’re in a “collapse zone.”

Since then, International Towers residents have been living in various locations, including a Boardman hotel, a retirement building and nursing homes for close to two months.

The Realty demolition contractor said he expects International Towers residents to be able to return home by the end of the week of Aug. 11.

The lawsuit, filed by attorney Joseph T. Joseph Jr. of Beachwood, alleges the International Towers residents “suffered personal effects such as confusion, mental anguish, undue stress, headaches, restlessness, sleeplessness and experienced significant fright, increased anxiety, panic attacks, worry, concern emotional trauma and depression, and each has suffered other damages and difficulties, including but not limited to the significant disruption of their daily lives and activities and other inconveniences.”

The International Towers residents are elderly, have medical conditions and / or disabilities that require special needs, according to the lawsuit.

The evacuation has caused “significant disruption that affected their daily lives and regularly scheduled routines,” the lawsuit reads. “The foregoing havoc resulted from the negligent conduct, acts, errors and / or omissions and / or failed supervision of the named defendants in their handling of the work being performed at the Realty Tower building.”

YO Properties and LY Property declined Friday to comment.

Andrea Stass, an Enbridge spokeswoman, also declined to comment, but said: “The National Transportation Safety Board has the lead in the Youngstown investigation, and we are committed to assisting as needed. It’s important that we let the investigators complete their work and share their findings once all the facts are known.”

A June 14 preliminary report by the NTSB, which is leading the investigation, stated a four-person scrap-removal crew, engaged by GreenHeart Companies of Boardman – owned by Brian Angelili, YO Properties 47 LLC’s managing member – was working in a basement area underneath the building’s sidewalk removing old utility lines when a crew member sawed three times into a pipe mistakenly believing it to not have natural gas in it. That caused the explosion.

Tom Chapman, an NTSB board member, said May 30, two days after the explosion, that a final report could take one to two years to complete.

Joseph said Friday: “This explosion is a tragedy for the entire downtown community of Youngstown, Ohio. One thing common to all gas explosion disasters of this nature is negligence. These incidents are not the result of an act of God, but the result of mistakes, omissions and errors of individuals. The damage caused by that negligence is overwhelming, and the residents of the International Towers have been feeling it first-hand ever since.”

In the lawsuit, Joseph wrote that YO Properties, LY, GreenHeart and Enbridge were negligent in the explosion.

The May 28 explosion killed Akil Drake, a Chase worker on Realty’s first floor, and injured nine others in the building. Drake’s mother and sister filed a wrongful death lawsuit June 8 against YO Properties, LY, GreenHeart, Dominion, Enbridge and numerous Enbridge companies.

In the International Towers lawsuit, Joseph wrote the defendants “either knew or should have known that the inherently and / or unreasonably dangerous work being performed posed a foreseeable danger of harm to those located on the premises or immediately surrounding the Realty Tower building such as the plaintiffs.”

Also, the lawsuit alleges YO Properties, LY and GreenHeart “negligently and carelessly allowed an understaffed and unsupervised crew, or unqualified personnel, to perform highly and inherently and / or unreasonably dangerous work.”

The lawsuit contends Enbridge and / or Dominion “were negligent in failing to advise, warn, instruct or otherwise communicate with the contractors working on the Realty Tower building project about the risks and dangers of cutting any gas line before assessing whether or not those same lines were pressurized.”

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