Houston Wants Fallen Fire Fighters Families to Pay
Houston city officials last month said they would not pursue financial claims against firefighter families to recover money the city paid out for medical care following the mortiferous Southwest Inn fire in 2013. But the attorney for those families has said, in essence, that the metropolis is hiding behind legal technicalities in making that denial.
The Southwest Inn burn down was the deadliest in Houston fire-eater history, challenge the lives of four firefighters at the scene and a 5th who died of injuries later. Dozens more were injured. The urban center paid hundreds of thousands of dollars in decease benefits, medical benefits, and workers compensation to firefighters who survived and families of those who didn't.
Afterward, firefighters and firefighters' families filed a lawsuit against Motorola, claiming that the company's faulty radios caused an 18-minute filibuster in firefighters reaching their trapped colleagues, who died of suffocation. If the trapped firefighters had been reached earlier, they could have been revived, the suit alleges.
Ben Hall, the chaser representing the mother of fallen firefighter Robert Bebee and other firefighters, asked the courtroom to rule on alien claims as to who should share in the settlement of that case.
"If there is any victory here is not that we whipped the metropolis back into position; the real victory is that we've given hope to future firefighters and their families, that should they perish in the exercise of their duties, the urban center volition non claw into their caskets to attempt to get money back," Hall told The Texas Monitor.
ABC-13 start broke the story of the urban center'due south merits in the Motorola adjust .
From ABC-xiii :
In what is called a subrogation claim, the metropolis wants to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in benefits it paid to the families of the fallen firefighters. When that came to light a few weeks ago, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner adamantly said the city was not pursuing that coin. Simply now [the urban center] appears unwilling to simply walk away from the approximately $one.5 million.
In court documents, Hall said the city demanded that he give up the fee he earned in that five-year-long litigation as a condition of the city giving up its lien on the dead firefighter'south estate.
The city's demands on him have been "contradictory and confusing," Hall wrote. "The metropolis claims that past law it is entitled to be paid back workers compensation and death benefits it paid out" in connection with Bebee'southward death.
The mayor pledged in July to drop any such drove efforts. "The city is not pursuing whatsoever liens on the firefighters or their families," a city spokeswoman told The Texas Monitor.
Patrick "Marty" Lancton, head of the Houston firefighters union, asked the mayor to go further, and to send a letter to families releasing any city claims.
"We then went to city council the following week. We went with the families of our fallen and injured. We were told that the families were lying [about city drove efforts]," Lancton said. Merely, "There were liens, information technology turns out, similar nosotros had stated."
Hall, in his court filing, said that instead of providing the letter of the alphabet to families that Lancton had asked for, the metropolis hired an exterior lawyer who demanded that Hall and other lawyers requite upwards their fees "equally a status for waiver of the city's lien." This, he wrote, in spite of the fact that "the metropolis did not spend a dime in Mrs. Bebee's litigation investigating the facts surrounding the fire" nor offered to reimburse her for the costs of that investigation.
The monitoring of lawsuits stemming from the Southwest Inn fire began during the administration of one-time Mayor Annise Parker. The metropolis quietly hired an attorney to claw back coin on any settlements reached, so the city could be reimbursed for the costs it incurred for the firefighters' medical intendance.
The urban center's concluding threat, Hall said, was to concur Hall liable for the whole amount the metropolis is seeking, if he doesn't agree to waive the fees he has earned. Hall opposed Turner in the 2015 mayoral ballot.
Hall also said the urban center should exercise more to prevent the families of metropolis employees who work in harm's way from facing such claims in the future.
"When you take a municipality where expected death is on the job description of the employee — and we're talking about firefighters and constabulary officers — should you have a policy that says when the chore robs you lot of life, that the city permanently waives any recoveries, any subrogation rights confronting the estates of the employees?" Hall said. "That should be the side by side footstep."
Trent Seibert can be reached at [electronic mail protected] or at 832-258-6119.
Source: https://texasmonitor.org/attorney-houston-hiding-behind-technicalities-in-effort-to-deny-claims-of-fallen-firefighters/
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