Lofgren case settles...

Mark Eatherton

<a href="http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=336483">http://www.9news.com/rss/story.aspx?storyid=336483</a>



From the outside, it appears that the only losers was the Lofgren family...



"The perfect storm..."



If you go to 9news.com and put Lofgren into their search engine, you will see the timeline on this story, and it is not good...



ME

SWEI

Looks like the insurance company

or companies wrote a fat check and nobody is officially to blame.  It's just a "freak combination of a bunch of little things that shouldn't have all happened together."



Hmmm.....

Steamhead

We'll never know the whole story

especially now that there won't be a criminal trial, like there should have been. Someone should have been hanged for this.

bill_105

Easy now

No one needs that. In the law and insurance business you have to have an acceptance of what it is. There are things that are going to happen which you may not like. You have to live with it.

Those lines are what I was told by a very prominent lawyer along time ago.

Bob Harper

wrongful death case

It is actually rather simple. If you don't want people to wake up dead you:

-promulgate standards based on lab testing, litigation and anecdotal field experience. You constantly monitor and revise those stds. over time

-You develop standardized training curriculae based upon the above, monitor and revise as needed

-you train technicians based upon the above, monitor and re-train as needed but also at regular intervals

-you develop industry certifications based upon the above, which includes written and performance testing after considerable minimum classroom and lab training. You re-cert. every three years which includes min. classroom time and hands-on practical skills

-you develop training and certification for municipal inspectors on the above. You require re-certification every 3 yrs including min. classroom and practical testing.

-You perform an in-house post view inspection of all installations for internal quality assurance. You conduct performance-based testing of all installations to the national stds. With respect to the Lofgren case, that should have included not only inspection of all venting and MUA but a pressure test of the piping, then performance testing of the installation at a national Worst Case std.

-the AHJ requires third party performance testing and inspection before issuing a U&O

-the municipality requires annual inspection by a qualified agency with performance testing every 3 years

-the industry stds. include specific language agreeing on what conditions constitute failure and what triggers repair or replacement.

-that where field testing and anecdotal reports are collected into some qualified agency that monitors such information, catalogues it, shares it with various agencies, Stds organizations, test labs, and mfrs. so that the industry can respond quickly to failures or problems

-that there is a qualified agency overview of all forensic investigators, first responders, EMS, and Fire Officials with respect to incident response, recognition of the cause, documentation of site condtions and preservation of scene materials until a qualified investigator can properly conduct the investigation with accurate and proper reporting to this information pool in a professional and scientific manner, such as NFPA 921 stds.

-That there is an information network established to identify qualified investigators quickly, share information and reporting.



Now, wrap all that up and send it to the ICC, NFPA, ACCA, ARI, PHCC, UL, ASTM, ANSI , ASHRAE and anybody else with a stake in the game and get all this baked into uniform codes and standards. It is absurd that the State of Pa for instance has 2,562 various municipalities that each can have its own local ordinances over and above the Pa Uniform Construction Code (ICC). Plus a lot of these municipalities "opted out" of adopting the I-codes thus are still using some form of the old BOCA codes. Then, you have situations such as the State of Delaware, where stds. adopted by the State Fire Marshal have been upheld in Superior Court as enforceable against contractors. You also have God knows how many air qualify and "green" everything agencies regulating us to death, all under the watchful eye of OSHA and the EPA, for starters.



We can write laws but the jails are full of people who didn't obey them. We can write standards all day but the courts are full of cases where they weren't followed or where those stds. were actually found to be inadequate if not down right hazardous. It all still comes back to people having a conscience about their fellow man.