Fire Law Blog

The Toronto District School Board has filed a $90 million lawsuit against the Toronto Fire Services and the Toronto Police Services Board claiming their failure to extinguish and properly overhaul a fire in 2019 led to the destruction of the York Memorial Collegiate Institute.

A Connecticut superior court has dismissed several counts in a wrongful death suit against the City of West Haven and the state arising out of a rather bizzare vehicle-accident-tasing- administration of a sedative case, but the case will proceed on the remaining counts for now.

In this episode Curt and Bill Maccarone discuss the upcoming FLSA for Fire Departments web-conference May 11-14, 2021, and plans for the next web-conference October 5-8, 2021. In addition three new Advanced FLSA webinars have been scheduled for the fall of 2021.

A Glastonbury firefighter is facing criticism for an off-hand comment that he made to a BLM activist Sunday. The activist, Ivelisse Correa, videoed the exchange she had with the firefighter.

A New Haven fire lieutenant along with thirty firefighter-candidates have filed suit to block the city’s plans to use a lottery to break a tie between 99 applicants who scored 100 on a civil service hiring test. With Lieutenant Samod Rankins serving as the lead plaintiff, the suit was filed today in New Haven Superior Court.

In this episode, Curt and attorney Paul Samakow discuss the Firefighter’s Rule, and in particular the challenges of recovering damages for burn injuries. Paul is a nationally known advocate for burn survivors and their families. He has a national practice representing burn survivors.

The mother of a 19-year-old special needs man who was shot in the Seattle CHOP zone last summer, has filed suit against the city of Seattle claiming that medics failure to come to his aid led to his death. Donnitta Sinclair filed suit last week in federal court claiming the intentional and negligent conduct of the city caused the death of her son, Horace Lorenzo Anderson, Jr.

Today’s burning question: I am a volunteer fire chief and have been very interested in taking your FLSA course May 11-14, 2021. Is there any way to just take the section related to volunteer issues at a reduced rate? The other sections are interesting but are not the focus of what I need to know.

A battalion chief with the City of Coronado has filed suit claiming he and similarly situated battalion chiefs have been wrongly classified as exempt from overtime. Perry Peake filed the class action suit this week in US District Court for the Southern District of California.

A lawsuit filed by the family of a Utah battalion chief killed when a Very Large Air Tanker (VLOT) dropped 19,600 gallons of fire retardant on his position while operating at the Mendocino Complex Fire in California in 2018, will continue following a ruling by a US District Court judge.

The ongoing saga of Brookline firefighter Gerald Alston took another step toward closure with the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts upholding a decision by the Massachusetts Civil Service Commission to order his reinstatement to the fire department.

Today’s burning question: What is "insubordination"? I am so tired of people trying to make fire departments into paramilitary organizations. We are not the military, it’s a vocation. Insubordination has no place in the fire service as a basis for discipline. Answer: While you are correct that fire departments in the US are not part of the military, the term paramilitary has several definitions.

A paramedic captain with the San Francisco Fire Department has filed an 18-count complaint in federal court alleging an assortment of gender, pregnancy, and lactation-based claims. Sarah Perata filed suit last week in US District Court for the Northern District of California.

The Supreme Court of Missouri has upheld a state law requiring cities that annex property in a fire protection district to pay the district “what the district would have collected in tax revenue within the annexed area.” The case involved a challenge brought by the City of Crestwood against the Affton Fire Protection District.

A Kansas City, Kansas firefighter who was suspended without pay in 2016 for working a second job while on sick leave, has been awarded $2.4 million in damages for race discrimination. Jyan Harris claims the department discriminated against him because he is African American.

Where firefighters are able to collectively bargaining, what subjects are bargainable, and what subjects not? That question intrigued me in law school to the point that it became the focus of my senior thesis: The Scope of Collective Bargaining for Firefighters.

A Bridgeport, Connecticut firefighter who was terminated in 2012 following his arrest for insurance fraud, has lost a third lawsuit alleging that he was wrongful terminated. James Jackson was accused of falsely reporting that several thousand dollars worth of personal items had been stolen in a burglary in order to collect from his insurer.

A former Pennsylvania fire chief who embezzled more than $84,000 over a seven-year period from his fire volunteer department, has pled guilty. Adam Kauer, 39, had been the fire chief of the East Carnegie Volunteer Fire Department from 2012 to 2019.

A Washington fire chief was who terminated following a vote of no-confidence by the firefighter’s union, has been awarded $734,376.50 in damages by a federal court. Chief David Bathke was fired in 2019 by Ocean Shores Mayor Crystal Dingler after he refused her requests to resign.

The man whose state court conviction for setting a fire that killed three Pittsburgh firefighters in 1995 was set aside due to prosecutorial misconduct, will have to face a retrial after all in federal court. Gregory Brown Jr. was convicted of setting the Bricelyn Street Fire on Valentine’s day, 1995.