PROVIDENCE -- Superior Court Judge Alice B. Gibney has temporarily halted the taking of depositions of West Warwick town officials who had been subpoenaed to appear today to turn over records to lawyers representing victims of The Station fire.
Gibney, in a written decision issued late yesterday afternoon, said she is satisfied by the petitioners' assurances that the requested depositions are necessary at this stage and will not be cumulative. But the judge said that before the depositions are allowed to go forward, a formal pretrial discovery plan must be approved by the court.
Once such a plan is issued, she said, the depositions of the 11 West Warwick officials subpoenaed by lawyer Max Wistow, an interim lead counsel for the fire victims, will be allowed to go forward.
Lawyers for the Town of West Warwick last week filed court papers asking Gibney to quash the subpoenas that Wistow issued for the production of town records. They maintain that all discovery in The Station lawsuits should be postponed until the courts decide where the suits will be consolidated. Currently, lawyers representing fire victims have suits pending in Superior Court, Providence; in U.S. District Court, Providence; and in U.S. District Court, New Haven, Conn.
In arguments before Gibney last week, Marc DeSisto, the lawyer for the town's insurer, also argued that Wistow and the other lawyers he is working with on behalf of fire victims have no standing to take depositions at this point because none of them have yet filed any lawsuits on behalf of their clients. Wistow and many other lawyers say they are waiting to file their lawsuits until evidence collected from the charred ruins of the former nightclub is tested.
Testing of evidence could begin soon. Gibney is expected to approve testing protocols at a hearing scheduled tomorrow.
Wistow says he does not intend to do much questioning of the West Warwick officials at this point, but wants them to appear at depositions so he can officially collect all relevant town records in connection with the site where the nightclub stood.
He told Gibney at a hearing last week that lawyers need the town records to ascertain who should be sued in connection with the fire. Through the records, he said, he hopes to determine the names of contractors who worked at the Cowesett Avenue site, as well as those who installed materials there and the manufacturers of those materials.
