
DATE: Monday, March 10, 1997                TAG: 9703100041

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B1   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY MARC DAVIS, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: NORFOLK                           LENGTH:  145 lines

DAMAGES SOUGHT IN DEATHS OF 4 CARBON MONOXIDE POISONING IS BLAMED FOR KILLING 2 ADULTS AND 2 CHILDREN.

Who is responsible for the deaths of a family of four in their rented home in Park Place in December 1994?

No one disputes the cause of death: carbon monoxide poisoning. The victims - a mother, father and two children - died after breathing exhaust fumes from a poorly vented furnace. All four were dressed for bed. Three were found in bedrooms.

How did the deadly gas accumulate in the house? Who botched the repair and inspection of the furnace and exhaust chimney?

This week, two powerful Norfolk institutions - the city housing authority and the local gas company - are scheduled to go on trial for the four deaths. The case is expected to last about two weeks.

Jury selection was scheduled to start today but was postponed so the judge can hear various pretrial motions. The trial could begin as early as Tuesday, or might be delayed until next week.

Accused of negligence are Virginia Natural Gas, which piped gas into the house and inspected the defective furnace, and the Norfolk Redevelopment and Housing Authority, which also inspected the home and furnace.

Relatives seek $5 million for each victim - $3 million for compensatory damages, $2 million for punitive damages.

Both the gas company and the housing authority deny responsibility. Both will try to pin blame on the landlords and, perhaps, the tenants themselves, according to pretrial court papers.

The landlords, Dale and Suzanne Marshall of Virginia Beach, were originally co-defendants in the case, but they agreed in August to pay $975,000 to the victims' relatives. Both are expected to testify at trial.

The tragedy at 208 W. 30th St. claimed the lives of Julia Dempsey, 38; her fiance, William E. Staton, 41; their 5-year-old son, William E. Dempsey; and her 15-year-old daughter, Lakisha.

Investigators blamed a faulty gas-fueled furnace. They said a chimney that vented carbon monoxide fumes was blocked with fallen bricks and soot, which forced the poisonous, odorless gas into the house.

The plaintiffs will rely on that theory. The defendants will try to debunk it.

On Friday, Judge Marc Jacobson denied motions to dismiss the case. Those motions and related briefs offer a preview of who will testify and what will be argued at trial.

THE TENANTS

Under state law, the gas company and the housing authority are not liable if the tenants contributed to the accident in any way.

The defendants apparently will argue just that.

The housing authority said Staton, the father, knew there were problems with the furnace. The gas company red-tagged the furnace as defective and turned off gas to it in March 1993, 21 months before the accident. Staton signed a receipt acknowledging that action.

The authority also said Julia Dempsey smelled fumes from the boiler in the past and had complained to the landlords about it.

Somehow, someone had turned the gas back on after the gas company had turned it off. According to court files, nobody knows who did it. It is not clear from pretrial depositions what role the tenants themselves played.

``A jury could easily find that the actions of the decedents contributed to their deaths,'' the housing authority said in a legal brief.

THE LANDLORDS

Did the Marshalls try to fix the furnace? Did they turn the gas back on?

If they did, the gas company and the housing authority might be blameless.

In pretrial testimony, the Marshalls do not recall making repairs or turning on the gas. Yet the household's sole survivor - Mashauna Dempsey, now 19 - remembers seeing Dale Marshall try to fix the flue system sometime before the accident.

``It is quite likely,'' the gas company said, ``that his failure to properly repair the premises . . . was the cause of the deaths.''

Defense experts will testify that ``if the boiler had been regularly and properly cleaned and maintained, the deaths would not have occurred.''

There is indirect evidence that the tenants did not turn the gas back on. The housing authority inspected the house in March 1993, eight days after the gas company red-tagged the furnace, and the tag was still there and the gas still off.

THE GAS COMPANY

In pretrial motions, Virginia Natural Gas said it is not responsible for conditions inside the house, ``on the customer's side of the meter.''

``The deaths . . . were not the result of a defect in the natural gas supplied by VNG,'' the company said.

The plaintiffs, however, said Virginia Natural Gas knew the furnace was defective because the company flagged it in 1993. They will argue at trial that the utility should have cut off gas to the whole house, not just the defective water heater and the furnace. That might have stopped someone from turning the gas back on.

They cite a 1992 ruling by the Virginia Supreme Court: ``A public utility has a common law duty to its customer in a situation where the utility has actual knowledge of a dangerous condition in the customer's equipment,'' even if that equipment is inside the house.

The judge apparently agreed Friday, ruling that Virginia Natural Gas would not be dismissed from the case.

The plaintiffs also said Virginia Natural Gas should have put two red tags on the defective equipment - one each on the boiler and water heater - not just one. The company said that would not have accomplished anything.

``Plaintiff cannot demonstrate that placing two or 20 red tags on the appliances would have had any effect in this case,'' the gas company said in a legal brief.

THE HOUSING AUTHORITY

The house on 30th Street was subsidized by the federal government and was inspected regularly by the Norfolk housing authority.

After the accident, the authority said it had inspected the house three times. Once was in March 1993, soon after the gas company flagged the furnace. The housing inspector saw the red tag and ordered the Marshalls to fix the heater. The inspector returned within 30 days and found the heater in good repair.

The last inspection was in 1994, nine months before the poisoning. It found only minor flaws in the house, the authority said at the time.

In pretrial motions, the authority said it is immune from most lawsuits because it is a government agency. The judge disagreed Friday and kept the authority in the case.

The housing authority said the landlords are solely responsible for repairing and maintaining the boiler. The plaintiffs said the authority failed to properly inspect the house.

At trial, the authority will be represented by attorney James L. Chapman IV; the gas company by Samuel W. Meekins Jr.; the plaintiffs by Stanley E. Sacks. ILLUSTRATION: Color photos by Bill Tiernan/The Virginian-Pilot

Funeral home personnel remove the bodies of the four victims from

the home in Park Place in 1994.

Mashaunda Dempsey, center, found the bodies, one of whom was her

mother, on her 17th birthday.

Members of the Norfolk Police Department check the house on the

night of the tragedy.

Graphic

A 1994 TRAGEDY: WHO IS RESPONSIBLE? WHAT HAPPENED In a rented

home at Park Place in Norfolk, a four members of a family were

killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Investigators blame a faulty

gas-fueled furnace.

THE QUESTIONS The court will examine, this week or next, the