A Boy Died When Hyperbaric Chamber Exploded. Now Family Is Suing for Negligence in $100 Million Lawsuit
A Boy Died When Hyperbaric Chamber Exploded. Now Family Is Suing for Negligence in $100 Million Lawsuit
NEED TO KNOW
Thomas Cooper was receiving treatment at The Oxford Center in Troy, Mich., when a fire started in the chamber on Jan. 31
His family has filed a $100 million gross negligence lawsuit against the manufacturer of the hyperbaric chamber and others
The boy was being treated for sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder
The family of a 5-year-old boy who died inside a hyperbaric chamber in Michigan has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the manufacturer and the facility where the tragedy occurred.
The boy, Thomas Cooper, was receiving treatment at The Oxford Center in Troy, Mich., when the fire started in the chamber on Jan. 31.
Attorneys for the boy’s family claimed the fire “was a foreseeable, inevitable, and virtually certain result of Defendants’ callous indifference to human life,” CBS News reported Monday, Sept. 22.
“There’s a time period that it takes to pressurize and within a short period of time, he becomes engulfed in flames,” said James Harrington, one of the attorneys representing Thomas’ family.
Harrington tells PEOPLE that Thomas’s parents had taken the boy to the center for sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder.
Oakland County Circuit Court
According to the gross negligence suit filed on Monday, Sept. 22, and obtained by PEOPLE, Sechrist Industries, the manufacturer of the Hyperbaric chamber, “manufactured, designed, tested, and placed into the stream of commerce its monochamber with full knowledge that it was, in essence, a coffin waiting to ignite.”
Sechrist Industries, the lawsuit alleges, was “acutely aware that the introduction of a single spark, arc, or ignition source in its chamber – pressurized with pure oxygen- would create an inferno from which no patient could possibly escape alive.”
PEOPLE reached out to Sechrist Industries for comment.
Oakland County Circuit Court
“There were so many failures,” Harrington says. “It was designed and manufactured without fire suppression systems, without a deluge system, without an automatic fire detection system, without an effective emergency extraction system, without any warnings whatsoever regarding fire and explosion hazards without any warnings regarding prohibited items to be taken into the unit without any warnings whatsoever of electrical hazards, without any warnings and lack of an emergency extraction system.”
Other defendants in the lawsuit include the Oxford Center and its owner, Tamela Peterson and three workers. All four have been criminally charged in the boy’s death, CBS News reported.
“My fear is that there’s others operating out there in a similar way, endangering American families and Americans every single day,” says Harrington. “This is a very, very, very serious incident that was so preventable. And it’s my hope that through our collective work here with the family and our legal team we’re able to bring awareness on the use of these, inherent dangers that lie with the use of these hyperbaric chambers.”
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PEOPLE reached out to The Oxford Center and Gerald Gleeson II, who is representing Peterson for the second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter charges against her, for comment.
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