Dec. 2 -- OAKLAND, CA -- The thick black smoke from a savage warehouse inferno came quickly two years ago, but not quickly enough to spare 36 mostly young partygoers from the terror of knowing they were at life’s end: “I am going to die, mom,” one texted; a young couple fell into an embrace, dying of asphyxiation in each other’s arms.
Adding to the families’ pain, many questions still remain about the Dec. 2, 2016, Ghost Ship fire. Most of them focus on how an artists’ collective in a Fruitvale neighborhood warehouse thrived for years without any city inspections, despite frequent visits there by police and firefighters to deal with problems. Upwards of 20 people lived there, often renting it out for parties, and even an orgy.
But answers could soon be coming as a massive lawsuit involving more than 80 plaintiffs against Oakland, PG&E and warehouse owner Chor Ng lurches through Alameda Superior Court before Judge Brad Seligman.
In what one legal expert called “a very significant setback” for the city, the California Supreme Court last month declined to hear an appeal of Seligman’s decision in May to let the case go to trial, rejecting Oakland’s argument that it is immune from liability from the fire.
Seligman, in his ruling, effectively sent Oakland a message: You have to at least attempt to inspect buildings. The judge let the city off the hook in a different case — a lawsuit over a deadly fire on San Pablo Avenue — because three days before the blaze officials went inside and inspected the halfway house. But the Ghost Ship warehouse was never inspected.
It’s a case that could end up costing the city and setting a precedent for other California public agencies who also have been protected by broad immunities in civil lawsuits. While the city and other defendants will have other chances to appeal, the possibility that at least some of the dozens of plaintiffs will take the case to a jury is now realistic, said University of San Francisco Law Professor Joshua Paul Davis.
“If the plaintiff wants to go to trial, it goes to trial,” Davis said. To stop it would likely take “a global settlement” involving all parties and an admission of wrongdoing by the city along with a public apology, an unlikely scenario in a situation where parents are demanding accountability for the deaths of their children.
One of them is David Gregory, the father of Michela Gregory who died in the arms of her boyfriend, Alex Vega.
“It seems like so many people knew about the conditions, we just want justice, we want the truth to come out,” Gregory said. “Nobody is willing to admit they screwed up. They’re all at fault in my book.”
Thomas Brandi, a lawyer speaking for the plaintiffs, said the legal teams will be deposing city employees with knowledge of the horrific conditions in the arts collective in the weeks, months and years before the fire. What is said could be damning.
It will “establish what the city knew, when the city knew it, and why didn’t the city comply with the mandatory duties imposed by law that would have prevented this tragedy,” Brandi said.
A spokesman for Oakland City Attorney Barbara Parker did not respond to a request to interview her. The city recently switched law firms representing it in the lawsuit after losing the argument that it was immune from liability.
The city and the Ngs are not named in a separate criminal case where master tenant Derick Almena and fellow defendant Max Harris are each charged with 36 counts of involuntary manslaughter. A trial will take place next spring.
A possible area of vulnerability for the city in the civil suit involves the testimony in the related criminal case against Almena and Harris of a fire department captain who said he sent a written warning about the Ghost Ship in 2014 to the city Fire Marshal, in an attempt to figure out the use of the building and to note the high fire load there.
The captain, George Freelen, testified that he sent the paper document because Ghost Ship was not in the online inspection database.
But Freelen said he never got an answer or any followup from then Fire Marshal Miguel Trujillo.
At the same hearing, Trujillo testified he never received Freelen’s document, nor did he find it at Freelen’s fire station or anywhere else.
Freelen and Trujillo didn’t respond to requests to comment for this story.
But fire union President Dan Robertson said Freelen “is about as straight a shooter as they come. If he says he sent a report, I believe he sent a report.”
Records show that Freelen did inspect businesses adjacent to the Ghost Ship in February 2016 without documenting any other efforts to inspect the Ghost Ship or add it to inspection lists.
Freelen made the rounds on 31st Avenue and International Boulevard, inspecting or attempting to inspect the other properties owned by Chor Ng, located around the corner from where he worked at fire Station 13. Records show on Feb. 19, 2016, he listed the Boost Mobile store as “compliant,” reported he could not access the Botanica and Gift Shop or a store called Fresas and noted a salon was a closed business.
He returned six days later to inspect the auto body shop next door to Ghost Ship, listing it as a closed facility.
According to fire department records, his final visit to the intersection came on March 26, 2016 — less than nine months before the deadly warehouse fire — but he again noted that he could not gain access to Fresas or the gift shop, which are located around the corner from Ghost Ship on International Boulevard. All the buildings are owned by the Ngs.
On Sunday, Gregory and other Ghost Ship victim families plan to go to the 31st Avenue warehouse. The gutted building looks much the way it did the day after the fire: a burned out, blackened shell. Gregory, who works a graveyard shift, has not missed a single hearing in the criminal case.
“I still feel there’s no closure and I have to go there,” he said. “I hope when this is said and done we will be able to move on with our lives, but until this legal process is over, we have no choice but to have to deal with the fact that justice is not being served yet.”
Davis, the law professor, said successful lawsuits can help people like the parents of Ghost Ship victims heal and achieve vindication. But there is also a stark realization they must eventually confront, he said: “The reality of litigation is it doesn’t bring anyone back.”
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