Copyright 2006 St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Inc.
By ROBERT PATRICK
St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Missouri)
A St. Louis jury ordered a rental store this week to pay $500,000 to the mother of two children killed by an early morning fire in 2001 that was blamed on a faulty power cord. Two of Dawn Driggott’s children, 12-year-old Jonathan Pettengill and 10-year-old Katherine “Katie” Pettengill, died from a fire that started while Driggott was at work.
Jonathan and Katie stayed up after their mother left that July 23, watching TV, hanging out with friends and playing on a computer which had been a Christmas present, according to court testimony. Jonathan called his mother at about 3:30 a.m. and said he was going to bed. At around 6 a.m., Katie called her mother, who told her it was time to go to bed. Investigators believe the fire started about 30 minutes later.
The apartment quickly filled with suffocating smoke, Driggott’s attorney, Anthony Bruning, told jurors. Jonathan collapsed in his mother’s room. Katie tried to escape, making it inches from the front door before dropping, Bruning said. Her body later blocked a neighbor’s efforts to kick in the door and rescue the children.
Jurors heard graphic descriptions of the burns the children suffered. Katie lived until the next day. She was burned over 90 percent of her body, Bruning said.
In 2002, Driggott sued the computer maker, Compaq, and National Rent-To-Own, where she got the computer, claiming a faulty electrical cord that came with the equipment sparked the fire.
Under Missouri law, a retailer can be held responsible if a product it sells is defective. The seller can also bring other parties into the case. National Rent-To-Own brought its distributor, BDI-Laguna, and the printer manufacturer, Canon USA, into the lawsuits as co-defendants, the store’s lawyer Susan Herold said Thursday.
Michele Sowers, a lawyer for Canon, said all parties except National Rent-To-Own settled the case before the trial but would not comment on the settlement amounts. Based on court records that were later sealed, KMOV (Channel 4) reported last month that Compaq settled the case for $250,000.
National Rent-To-Own denied that the power cord was faulty. Herold also said the malfunction that was claimed would not have started a fire unless there was adequate fuel and challenged Driggott’s qualities as a parent.
After Driggott moved to St. Louis, she left her children with their baby sitter in Chicago for four years before bringing them here, according to court documents and testimony.