EUGENE, Ore. -- A man whose wife died after their home was sprayed with pesticide has sued the Eugene company hired to do the job.

Fred Kolbeck filed the $2.5 million lawsuit against Swanson's Pest Management on Thursday, claiming the Eugene company is responsible for the death of his wife, Florence, after a technician sprayed pesticide chemicals in their home two years ago.

Swanson's operations manager, Joan Jensen, declined comment on the case, saying there's "nothing new to report."

The complaint filed in Lane County Circuit Court said that a state investigator found the company's technician wasn't licensed to treat homes and had failed his licensing test seven times.

The employee also used three times the allowed amount of a chemical in treating the house, according to an affidavit filed by a federal agent.

Florence Kolbeck died of cardiac arrest after she and her husband returned to their home on the Oregon coast after it was fumigated.

Fred Kolbeck was hospitalized for respiratory distress, and several paramedics who came to the house also experienced symptoms.

The lawsuit is based on a state Department of Agriculture investigation, which concluded that the company violated federal law in several ways when technician Bill Granstrom sprayed the home for bugs on June 29, 2005.

The state has not made its report public. But Eric Martenson, a special agent with the Environmental Protection Agency, referred to the investigation in a search warrant affidavit he filed last fall in U.S. District Court.

Among the state's findings, according to the affidavit:

-- Granstrom, while licensed as a commercial pesticide applicator by the state of Oregon, was not licensed to treat homes for general pests. His supervisor, Swanson's former general manager David Ottovich, told investigators that he thought Granstrom's "directly supervised commercial pesticide trainee" license was in effect on the day Kolbeck died. But it had expired six months earlier.

-- The two chemicals Granstrom mixed to spray the Kolbecks' home -- "Conquer Residential Insecticide Concentrate" and "ULD BP-100 Contact Insecticide" -- contained three times the allowable percentage of "esfenvalerate," the chemical that ultimately caused Florence Kolbeck's death.

-- Granstrom did not ventilate the Kolbeck house before he left, despite requirements to that effect on the labels of both of the chemicals he used. Granstrom also did not tell the Kolbecks to ventilate their home before re-entering, he told investigators.

-- Granstrom also misused the chemicals he sprayed at the Kolbecks, according to investigators, by misapplying his mixture to window frames, window sills, baseboards, below sinks and in kitchen cupboards. Conquer is to be used to treat voids in equipment and structures, not other areas.

Kolbeck's lawsuit adds that the two pesticides applied in his home weren't on the contract he signed, and that Conquer contains a naturally occurring form of of a chemical called pyrethrin which is eight times more toxic than the synthetic form, along with chemicals intended to increase its effect.