Digital Extra: The Station Fire

The reason, U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux says, is that most of the potential plaintiffs aren't Rhode Islanders and many potential defendants are from out of state.

01:00 AM EST on Tuesday, March 30, 2004

BY TRACY BRETON
Journal Staff Writer

PROVIDENCE -- A federal judge yesterday decided that civil suits stemming from The Station nightclub fire will be heard in the U.S. District Court here -- not in the Rhode Island Superior Court, where the owners of the nightclub and lawyers representing more than 200 potential plaintiffs wanted the cases tried.

Senior U.S. District Judge Ronald R. Lagueux said the fire cases could be heard in his court because the majority of the potential plaintiffs aren't Rhode Islanders and because many potential defendants are from out of state.

His decision is the first judicial interpretation of a new law that makes it easier for the federal courts to hear cases stemming from accidents that cause at least 75 deaths.

In his 51-page decision, Lagueux said the federal court will consolidate all the lawsuits, at least for the pretrial discovery part of the litigation, which would include the testing of evidence. However, he said the discovery process would not begin until Sept. 1 "in order to allow all potential plaintiffs an opportunity to bring suit and participate in discovery from the outset."

Less than a dozen lawsuits have been filed thus far. A plaintiffs' steering committee that has been working on behalf of fire victims since the Feb. 20, 2003, blaze plans to file suit within the next two months on behalf of more than 200 victims, lawyer Mark Mandell said last night.

Everything relating to the civil lawsuits has been on hold since last year, pending Lagueux's decision on the jurisdictional issue. The judge and his law clerks had to make their way through reams of congressional records in interpreting the new federal Multiparty, Multiforum Trial Jurisdictional Act of 2002 -- which took effect just 18 days before The Station fire.

Lagueux spent five months after hearing arguments in the case reviewing the history of the law and The Congressional Record to try to figure out what type of cases Congress intended to be included under the statute, and then crafting his decision.

The Station fire in West Warwick killed 100 people and injured more than 200. It started after the rock band Great White set off pyrotechnics, which ignited highly flammable packing foam that the nightclub owners, Michael and Jeffrey Derderian, had installed as soundproofing. The Derderians and the band's former tour manager, Dan Biechele, who set off the pyrotechnics, currently face 200 state criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter.

On the civil side, some current and potential plantiffs and defendants argued that under the new law, the federal court should exercise jurisdiction to hear the fire suits because they involve parties from several states. But others, including most of the potential plaintiffs, the Derderians and American Foam, the Rhode Island company that sold the foam to them, argued that the state Superior Court should hear the cases.

Lagueux said "it is clear that [by enacting the new law] Congress intended to create a mechanism whereby litigation stemming from one major disaster could easily be consolidated in one federal court for discovery and trial. It is also clear," he wrote, "that Congress' motivation in passing this legislation was to promote judicial efficiency while avoiding multiple lawsuits concerning the same subject matter strewn throughout the country in various state and federal courts."

He said a major reason for consolidating the cases in federal court would be to avoid "inconsistent discovery rulings and even verdicts on liability." Lagueux estimated that there are at least 335 potential plaintiffs who may litigate claims arising from the nightclub fire and that 44.18 percent of them are Rhode Island residents, which does not constitute "a substantial majority." He also said that based on the lawsuits already filed, the primary defendants are not all from Rhode Island.

If Lagueux had found that a substantial majority of the plantiffs and the primary defendants were from Rhode Island, the appropriate venue would have been the Superior Court.

Lawyer Max Wistow, who represents dozens of the fire victims and has argued that the cases belonged in the Superior Court, said Lagueux's stay of the discovery process represents a significant delay in moving the cases toward trial. He called Lagueux "one of the finest judges in this state" but said that he feared having the federal court hear the fire cases could cause huge problems that would further delay getting speedy justice for victims.

"We don't want to be in a situation where we spend an enormous amount of time, effort, money and human suffering that will be involved going through with a trial of these cases, get a verdict and then run the risk where an unhappy defendant is able to persuade a Circuit Court or the U.S. Supreme Court that there was no jurisdiction in the first place, which could completely invalidate all of these proceedings," said Wistow.

Mandell said that the plaintiffs' steering committee will meet soon to discuss whether to ask the 1st U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals to review Lagueux's decision on the jurisdictional issue now, before discovery begins.

Read the full text of U.S. District Court Judge Ronald R. Lagueux's ruling on The Station fire civil suits at:

http://projo.com/extra/2003/stationfire/pdf/lagueuxruling.pdf