By Ron Menchaca
The Post and Courier
CHARLESTON, S.C. — Charleston Mayor Joe Riley and Fire Chief Rusty Thomas were subpoenaed Tuesday as part of a lawsuit filed by the family of one of the nine area firefighters killed in the Sofa Super Store blaze on June 18.
The subpoenas order Riley and Thomas to turn over “key information and documents,” including fire department personnel files, firefighting policies and procedures, as well as code and building paperwork for the sofa store.
The lawsuit, filed Monday on behalf of firefighter Melvin Champaign’s family, is the first of a potential barrage of suits expected to arise from the deaths at the Savannah Highway store.
Carl Champaign Sr., a cousin and representative of the 46-year-old firefighter’s estate, filed the suit in Charleston. He is represented by two law firms, Motley Rice and Gergel, Nickles & Solomon.
Motley Rice attorney Marlon Kimpson noted that city officials have not been named in the suit but left open the possibility that other defendants could be added. “We will leave no stone unturned in this investigation,” he said. “As more information is gathered, other defendants may be added.”
State workers’ compensation law bars legal actions against an employer except in cases where there was a “specific or deliberate intent” to injure, Kimpson said.
Riley and Thomas were unavailable for comment, but city attorney Susan Herdina said the subpoenas came as a surprise because Motley Rice requested the same documents in August under the state’s Freedom of Information Act and the city was working with the firm to supply the files.
The subpoenas also touch on some of the same issues recently covered in a state report that cited the city for workplace safety violations in connection with the fire. In particular, the family’s attorneys seek copies of fire department policies for battling blazes in large commercial buildings with steel truss roofs, the type of construction at the sofa store.
The suit names as defendants the present and former owners of the site, the manufacturers of the furniture inside the store, a building contractor and the companies that built the fire doors that investigators later determined had malfunctioned. Neither the city of Charleston nor its fire department is named in the complaint.
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