City of Oakland tries again to get dismissed from Ghost Ship civil case
OAKLAND, Calif. (KTVU) - An attorney representing the 36 victims’ families in the Ghost Ship fire civil case said the City of Oakland should bear a large part of responsibility for the tragedy, despite the city’s repeated legal efforts to get dropped from the suit.
Attorney Bobby Thompson told 2 Investigates Wednesday that he anticipates both criminal defendants will help by testifying in the civil case and provide detailed information about visits by firefighters, police officers, other city employees, PG&E workers and the building owners over the years – proving others should be held accountable.
“We believe both criminal defendants, Derick Almena and Max Harris may have some very pertinent testimony to provide,” Thompson said. “We believe they’ll have a lot of testimony about when the city was in there, who was in there, what they said, what they promised to do, when PG&E was in the building and what they were doing.”
The city filed paperwork this week asking to be removed for a third time from the civil case and arguing the city should not be held responsible for the fire because it does not have a mandatory duty to enforce state or local building codes.
“It would be impossible for local governments to formally inspect and abate every hazardous condition on private property about which it learns, either through a citizen complaint or an employee’s observation while conducting other city functions,” the court filing reads. “Inspection immunity was enacted in order to avoid this exact conundrum for cities.”
In the Ghost Ship case, records show police officers and firefighters visited the warehouse on numerous occasions, however, no building inspection was ever performed.
“Years and years of being in that building and knowing it was a death trap and they did nothing,” Thompson said. “Does it make sense that only a building inspector can see that there’s no sprinklers in a building? I don’t think so. I think any person, a firefighter who’s actually trained to inspect buildings, can see that there’s no sprinkler system or that this building is dangerous, or that a fire exit is blocked. It doesn’t take a building inspector to notice these life safety issues.
Thompson disputes the recent filing by Oakland and said the city has a mandatory duty to take action if it learns of a life-safety issue in a building and does not get immunity if it hears of hazards and fails to initiate the inspection process.
2 Investigates uncovered a backlog of inspections last November. At that time, Oakland had at least 1,000 buildings in violation of state law for failing to inspect those buildings.
Since then, the city has promised an overhaul of its inspection process and blamed the delays and missed inspections on a staffing shortage. Oakland planned to hire more third-party inspectors to tackle the backlog but it’s unknown if that has happened.
“We are an open book,” Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf said. “We welcome the public to question how we are doing things and look at our processes and procedures because we have to preserve public safety and we are committed to doing that.”
The city claimed it would be impossible for local governments to formally inspect and abate every hazardous condition it learns about on private property. However, Curtis Briggs, a criminal defense attorney who represents Max Harris, cried foul and pushed blame on the city right after his client formally accepted the plea deal Tuesday.
“The city of Oakland botched this entire situation,” Briggs said. “When the Ghost Ship fire happened there were 300 warehouses just like Ghost Ship. There were thousands of people exposed to those warehouses that were in danger and it’s only because of luck that more tragedy did not happen.”
Civil attorneys agree with Briggs and argue cities must keep people safe by following state law and regularly inspecting buildings and not falling behind. Additionally, Thompson said Oakland is filing paperwork attempting to rewrite the law so it can ‘get a pass’ with the tragedy at the Ghost Ship.
“What they’re trying to do has no basis in the law,” Thompson said. “It has no case law, no precedent to support it. It’s a novel theory seeking to skirt its responsibilities under the law.”
Coming to Oakland’s defense is the city of San Francisco, which filed paperwork this week agreeing with Oakland’s position on inspection responsibility and the law.