The Atty. General of Rhode Island has released indictments against the owners of the Station nightclub, and the band (Great White) road manager. Each are charged withn 200 counts of manslaughter-for the 100 deaths resulting from the horrific fire of last February.
Yet, the Town of Warwick escaped all charges: neither the town building inspector, police chief, or fire marshal were indicted-despite the fact that :
-there were numerous fire code violations at the nightclub
-the nightclub was continuously overcrowded (perhaps 500 people in the night of the fire, vs. a max. permitted 0f 350)
-highly flammable foam insulation was installed in the club,illegally and without a valid building permit
-the band set of pyrotechnic devices inside a building, without any valid permit from the fire marshall
This is beginning to me to look like a total whitewash-the Ddereian brothers will be found guilty…but the real culprits will escape all justice.
What recourse do the victims have-can they go to the fedral government?
I’m sorry, but how is it the fault of the Fire Marshall et all when some damned fools break the law repeatedly? They can’t inspect every building every night, y’know.
Here we go again …
Once more, with feeling - the agents of government are not at fault, legally or morally, if they fail to catch a party who has decided to break the law. A cop cannot be held liable when he fails to notice a man with a suspicious bulge in his jacket walking by, even if that man then goes to a bank and robs it. Likewise, the Fire Marshal is not responsible for not catching the nightclub’s violations.
Your position appears to be that people are not obligated to obey the law unless they are caught not obeying the law. That, of course, is absurd. The Town of Warwick has no obligation even to have a Fire Marshal, much less uncover all violations of the fire code.
Sua
The government has a certain level of responsibility to enforce building and fire codes. If a nightclub repeatedly breaks the law, endangering the lives of clubgoers, the place should not be allowed to stay open. If the government was negligent in its enforcement of these codes, I think they shouldn’t be let off the hook.
One would have to provide evidence of negligence, though. The gov’t can’t be everywhere all the time, so the fact that a tragedy happened isn’t enough.
Nope - the government cannot be negligent in the enforcement of the laws. Indeed, the government need not enforce the law at all, as I said, the Town of Warwick had the right and the ability eliminate the position of Fire Marshal as a cost-cutting move, and I am sure that, around the country, there are several towns with fire codes but no fire marshal.
As for being let off the hook, there is one very effective way to punish town governments for failing to enforce the law - toss the bastards out of office. This is a political issue, not a legal one.
In NYC, Giuliani beat the incumbent mayor, David Dinkins, largely on a platform that Dinkins was incompetent on matters of policing, that he was not causing the law to be enforced. Dinkins lost the election, but Dinkins was never subject to civil or criminal liability from the victims of crime on his watch.
Sua
An amazing run-on sentence there. The period is your friend.
Sua
A related thread from earlier this year.
Sua
Well, let’s just say that NYC and Al Sharpton don’t agree with you.
This is civil, not criminal, but I think it shows that municipalities can be held responsible for their failure to enforce. I don’t know if Warwick was negligent at all WRT this case, but if someone can argue strongly enough that they were, the city could find itself in court.
Different issue, Cheesesteak. In Sharpton’s case, it was alleged that the police made an affirmative promise to Sharpton to provide him protection. If a party makes an affirmative promise to you and fails to deliver, and you act in reliance on the promise to your detriment, the party making the promise is liable. If the police had not made the promise, Sharpton could have and presumably would have made his own arrangements for his protection, such as hiring bodyguards or not attending the protest.
OTOH, if the police had not made the promise, and Sharpton had been stabbed, he would have had no cause of action against the police. The cause of action Sharpton had was essentially one in contract, not one in negligence, despite the language in the complaint.
That is the situation in the Station fire. The Town of Warwick made no promise to the Station patrons that the night club was free of fire risk. Thus, no reliance, and no liability.
Sua
Good point Sua, perhaps my thoughts on it aren’t supported by the law. Seems to me that by accepting a job like Fire Marshall, one makes that affirmative promise to uphold fire codes. If the Fire Marshall ignores his duties in a grossly negligent manner resulting in unsafe conditions, I think he should be held responsible.
There’s a difference between something bad happening on your watch, and just flat out not doing the job you promised to do.
There is no such thing as an implied affirmative promise. Further, if there was an implied affirmative promise made by the Fire Marshal, it would have been made to his employer, the Town of Warwick, not to the customers of The Station. One cannot reasonably rely to one’s detriment to an affirmative promise made to another.
Finally, you have massive issues of proof. The Warwick web site didn’t have stats about their fire marshal office, but I’d bet dollars to donuts that it has nowhere near enough employees or money to conduct inspections and follow-ups on even a small percentage of the buildings in Warwick. Ya can’t be negligent if you do not have the ability to perform the duties asked of you.
Sua
I guess I don’t understand the concept of negligence, as applied to the station nightclub. Just 2 weeks before the fatal fire, the town of West Warwick fires marshall inspected the nighclub.and renewed the occupancy permit. I am not a lawyer, but I would assume that the inspection (and subsequent approval)meant that that club was safe and met the applicable fire and safety codes. So, if the inspector’s word is worthless, then why do we have inspections at all? Just pinning up a certificate of inspection amounts to the same thing.
In this case, the town implied that the nightclub met code…so was there negligence? I would say so…
I am guessing that most inspections do not include ripping out the insulation to check it. That is the only possible failure of the fire marshall.
But that, and all the rest was the sole fault of the manager and the band.
Maybe our lawyers could explain the “feasance” brothers, mal, mis and non, with examples.
I think that officials’ failure to enforce laws would be non-feasance and I’m not sure that is a criminal act. SuaSponte doesn’t think so. If officials are not doing something you think they are required to do you go to a judge for a Writ of Mandamus. If you get one and the official doesn’t act then they are defying a court order which is punishable.
As to the inspection by a Fire Department inspector. That clears the night club as a building. I don’t think it has anything to do with what performers haul on the night of ther performance in order to do their schtick.
From what I’ve read in the local newspapers, the foam insulation was all exposed–I even remember seeing it on the news when they showed the video footage of the band right before the fire started. So if the fire marshall did an inspection, he definitely would have seen that.
You understand negligence, you just don’t understand the legal concept is all. Sure, there is a good argument to be made that the inspector acted negligently. There is no argument to be made that the inspector is civilly or criminally liable under a negligence theory.
Putting aside for right now the fact that, as I stated above, a governmental entity or employee cannot be held liable for allegedly failing to enforce the law. Let’s pretend that they can be held liable.
Reliance rears its ugly head again. Do you, as a matter of course, demand to see the occupancy permit of a store, bar, restaurant, etc., when you enter said establishment? If the establishment does not have a valid occupancy permit, do you then decide to leave the establishment? If you are an average person, the answer is no.
The fact of the matter is that whether or not The Station had been approved for occupancy was the farthest thing from the minds of the patrons that night. They did not act in reliance on the approval of the occupancy permit - they did not seek out the information and the approval of the occupancy permit did not affect their decision to attend the concert that night.
If a person acts in an unreasonable manner, but that unreasonable behavior did not affect your decisions, the negligent behavior is not relevant and does not present you with a cause of action.
Sua
Sua: I DAMN SURE check on the health inspection certificate of any restaurant that I enter…I am not about to risk my health by eating in a filthy establishment. In the same manner, I depend upon public officials to make sure that the elevator that I enter is not about to crash to the ground. With respect to the Station nightclub, the place was a known firetrap, and was continously cited for exceeding the occupancy permit capacity. The fact is, the town fire dept., police dept., and building inspection dept. all knew that the place was an accident waiting to happen.
I’m having a lot of problems with what Sua is saying in this thread. IANAL, but a lot of this seems counterintuitive to me. I can understand the example above, where a crime simply escapes the notice of a policeman, and that seems reasonable. But I’m having a hard time with the idea that a policman who deliberately stands idly by while a person is stabbed, for example, would be negligent only in the case of a previous explicit affirmative promise to protect that particular person. Are we saying that, for example, if Joe Cop sees a man with a knife approach Fred Bystander, and says “go ahead and stab the guy”, and does nothing to stop him, that he’s off the hook just because he didn’t promise Fred in advance that he would protect him? So there is no implied duty for Joe Cop? Am I misreading this thread? Because that’s what I’m getting, and it just seems wrong to me.
Also, the argument that a town “has no obligation even to have a Fire Marshal” bothers me. Does the law state that a government employee is exempt from negligence claims because he might not have been there at all? That doesn’t make any sense to me. If he was there, how does the supposition that he might not have been there hold any sway?
I also don’t get the reliance concept the way it was laid out. I absolutely rely on a place meeting Health & Safety codes; if I knew a place was in violation, I wouldn’t go there. Does the law really state that this reliance cannot be implied, that I must view every certificate for every code compliance for every building that I enter?
From my meager understanding of the law, I know that government employees can be shielded from civil or criminal liability, but I hadn’t thought it was because of negligence or reliance theory. One can certainly sue a club owner for example, if he were injured on the property due to the owner’s negligence, and successfully argue that he relied on the owner not to have dangerous conditions present. It happens all the time, and in fact the club owners are being prosecuted in the present case. So how would this reliance exist in the one case (the owner) and not the other (the town)? Is it not some other principle of law that justifies the different treatment of government employees?
If the cop says “go ahead and stab that guy,” that’s a very different thing than negligence. Same with a cop who, as you say deliberately stands idly by, as opposed to a cop who simply doesn’t notice when he should notice.
In any event, what we keep running up against is the difference between negligence and liability for neglience. Certainly a cop who fails to notice something that a reasonably prudent cop should notice has acted negligently; ya just can’t sue them for negligence and recover. The negligence is a matter for either employment - the cop gets fired - or for political redress - the people vote out the elected officials that allowed that kind of cop to be hired in the first place.
The law doesn’t address the issue, because, as you note, government employees - and governments - are shielded from civil or criminal liability for failing to uncover criminal behavior on the part of another. That is the main point here.
What I have done is gone beyond that, and pretended, as a thought experiment, that governments and employees were not so shielded.
Assuming that they weren’t, you still cannot “absolutely rely” on a place meeting Health & Safety codes - you would have to check. The government has no responsibility, for very good and obvious reasons, to call you and every other citizen of the town up personally and tell you which establishments passed inspection and which did not. You would not be able to assume that the building in question passed code; you would have to check.
The building owner is a different kettle of fish. The reliance there is not that a government employee discovered or didn’t discover X or Y about a building. The reliance there is a more basic one - that the owner of any building will take all reasonably prudent steps to eliminate potential hazards to guests in that building. That is an assumption you are allowed by law to make.
And that, of course, brings us to another point. The sole liability is with the owner of the building. The duty of the building owner is to have a safe building. The fire inspection does not eliminate or mitigate that duty in any way. If the building owner improperly puts in flammable insulation, he’s the one who created the hazard and bears responsibility. It is irrelevant whether the fire inspector noticed the insulation or not.
Sua
Well now you’re making a distinction as to the facts of the hypothetical situation, whereas before I thought we were saying that it’s an absolute principle. Simply “failing to notice” something wouldn’t necessarily constitute negligence, would it? I thought you had to show that it was something that the person clearly should have done, but failed to do (or shouldn’t have done, but did). Change my example to a cop who looks straight at the guy being stabbed, but doesn’t say anything, if that helps.
I mean, maybe I’m not getting what negligence is. Isn’t it, for example, when a store owner knows he has a broken stair on his stairway, and doesn’t fix it, and a customer falls and is injured? Isn’t that called “negligence”, even though the failure to act was in fact deliberate? Or does negligence have to be inadvertent?
OK, but what I’m suggesting is that the reason this is true is not negligence theory, but because cops are shielded from liability. Is that not the case?
Right.
Yes, and that’s where I’m not following you. It seems to me that if they weren’t so shielded, that they would be subject to civil or criminal action.
No, but I would assume they would either require remediation or shut the offending establishment down. The penalty for failing an inspection is to fix the problem, not to “call everyone in town”. And yes, if an inspector found a place to be dangerous to the point that my life would be at risk upon entering, I would absolutely expect that place to be closed until the problem can be remedied.
Right. What I’m asking is, isn’t that precisely the reason - because it’s the law? If we were to do your thought experiment, and treat the government the same as a private business owner, then they would incur the same type of liability, would they not? I’m not seeing any intrinsic difference, only a difference in law. In other words, it’s that way because we made it that way.
I agree.
That I don’t agree with. He may be shielded from prosecution, but it’s not irrelevant.