By Glenn Smith
The Post and Courier
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Lawyers for the Sofa Super Store no longer are seeking penalties against the city of Charleston for failing to turn over documents from an expert panel that probed the deadly 2007 blaze at its West Ashley showroom.
Sofa Super Store attorney Richard Rosen said the store’s legal team finally received all the documents that had been subpoenaed and saw no need to proceed with its motion for sanctions against the city.
At issue were some 47,000 pages of material produced by a six-member team of fire experts hired by the city to probe the June 18, 2007, blaze that killed nine Charleston firefighters.
The documents could play a key role in civil lawsuits filed against the store and its owners by the fallen firefighters’ families.
The store’s attorneys alleged that the city ignored a court-ordered July 15 deadline for handing over the documents, culled from a computer hard drive. Sandy Senn, an attorney for the city, maintained that the city had made a good-faith effort to review the documents and get them to the store’s attorneys as quickly as possible.
“The city produced all documents on the hard drive, withheld nothing, and as suspected there was very little that the parties hadn’t seen before,” she said.
Senn said most of the files produced were electronic copies of documents that already had been given to the store’s lawyers in hard-copy form long ago.
She said store attorneys keep asking for more material to deflect attention from the store’s principal owner, Herb Goldstein, and his efforts to delay giving a deposition in the case.
“In reality, Goldstein needs none of the documents now repeatedly produced by the city in order for him to answer questions about serious code violations at the Sofa Super Store,” Senn said.
Motley Rice attorney Kevin Dean, who represents some of the families who sued, made similar claims last month, accusing the store’s legal team of staging a witch hunt.
Rosen said it is the city that is trying to deflect blame. He maintained that the store’s document request was completely unrelated to any future deposition by Goldstein.
“The city’s own documents demonstrate gross negligence on behalf of the city, its fire department and leadership,” he said.
“While city fire department leadership and training have now changed, the city continues its attempts to shift blame away from itself.”
The store’s legal team is trying to defend the business and Goldstein against civil lawsuits that allege negligence and reckless conduct.
Among other things, the lawsuits allege that illegal additions to the store violated building codes and allowed the fire to spread rapidly through a building with highly flammable furniture and no sprinklers.
The store’s lawyers counter that poor tactics, training and leadership contributed to the firefighters’ deaths. They are pushing to add the city as a defendant in the lawsuits.
The blaze has been investigated by a host of experts and by agencies at every level of government. The final large study, a long-awaited probe by the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Gaithersburg, Md., will be unveiled Thursday in Charleston.
A draft report of the agency’s findings will be released at a news conference to be held from noon to 1 p.m. in the Cooper Room of the Holiday Inn Charleston at 125 Calhoun St.
The agency has been working with a computer model to reconstruct the blaze and determine why the fire spread so rapidly, why the building quickly collapsed and whether sprinklers could have saved lives.
Ninth Circuit Solicitor Scarlett Wilson has been waiting on the study to help her determine whether criminal charges are warranted in the case.
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