Suits Filed After Deadly CT Fire Continue
Source The Advocate, Stamford, Conn. (TNS)
STAMFORD — The father of the three girls killed in the Shippan fire in 2011 has agreed to settle with two contractors for their role in their deaths, leaving the city of Stamford as the sole remaining defendant in the wrongful-death suit.
The agreements, worth almost $1.2 million, were offered up by Best Electrical Contracting and New Canaan Design Partners, which did electrical and architectural work on Madonna Badger’s 116-year-old three-story house just before the blaze engulfed the Shippan Point home, killing the girls as well as Badger’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson.
Matthew Badger has said he would settle with the city for $17 million, court records show. No trial date has been set in the case and the next hearing is scheduled in Stamford for mid-January.
Stamford Corporation Counsel Kathryn Emmett could not be reached on Wednesday. She has previously declined comment on the case.
Attorneys for Best Electrical, which settled with Matthew Badger for $637,000, and New Canaan Design, which will pay $550,000, did not return calls for comment.
As a beneficiary of her daughters’ estates, Madonna Badger agreed to accept the settlements, the court records show.
The general contractor on the job, Michael Borcina and his company Tiberias Construction, has already settled the case after paying $4.25 million, records in the Stamford Probate Court show. A $680,000 settlement with Shoreline Electrical Contracting was also reached.
The fire killed 7-year-old twins Grace and Sarah and 9-year-old Lily Badger. Madonna Badger and Borcina were dating at the time and escaped the fire.
Authorities said the fire began after Borcina left a bag of fireplace ashes in a bin in a mudroom in the house after cleaning up a fire the two had in a fireplace that Christmas Eve, Borcina had been accused of contributing with other defendants like the city of Stamford in making the house, “a firetrap as a result of months of substandard construction leading up to the fire," the suit said.
Recently, Borcina has blamed the fire on Madonna Badger. He says it was Badger who placed the ashes in the mud room and he only told police that it was he who mistakenly set the blaze because he wanted to protect his former girlfriend from shouldering the responsibility for the deaths of her daughters and parents.
The lawsuit also says city officials knew or should have known that Borcina served as the general contractor for the work but didn’t have a state home improvement contractor’s license. The 2012 suit also said that city building officials did not properly inspect the home while it was under renovation and should discovered that it was improperly protected against fires. Stamford officials have denied any wrongdoing in connection with the fire.
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