PHILADELPHIA – Philadelphia and its housing authority have defeated three of four claims in a lawsuit blaming it for not fixing the smoke detectors in a public-housing building where 12 people died in a fire.
Federal judge Nitza Quinones Alejandro issued two recent rulings that say the Philadelphia Housing Authority isn’t liable for a “state-created danger” allegedly caused by falsification of reports and an unfulfilled promise to put working detectors in the building.
The blaze occurred at 869 N. 23rd Street in January 2022 and started when an autistic child set fire to bugs crawling on a Christmas tree. The estates of eight people who died sued the Philadelphia Housing Authority in 2024 through lawyers at Kline & Specter.
The complaint said PHA failed its policies of switching tenants in overcrowded apartments to bigger ones and addressing broken smoke detectors within 24 hours of notice.
Alejandro left one claim for the plaintiffs to continue with – a so-called Monell claim, which alleges the City established policies that led to the fire. Following the Third Circuit’s tough standard for “state-created danger,” Alejandro said the plaintiffs were free to leave the apartment or buy their own smoke detectors.
This is even though a Philadelphia social worker had visited Unit B, which housed 14 occupants, two weeks earlier and said she would return with functioning smoke detectors.
“Here, the status quo of the apartment and/or the inoperable smoke detectors did not change as a result of Defendant (Nadine) Fulton’s conduct,” Alejandro wrote.
“At the time of Defendant Fulton’s inspection of the apartment and her promise to replace the inoperable smoke detectors, the smoke detectors were inoperable. The smoke detectors remained inoperable after her inspection and promise to replace the smoke detectors.
“Because Defendant Fulton’s alleged conduct merely maintained the status quo, the conduct is insufficient… to create liability.”
It’s another frustrating loss on a “state-created danger” theory for Pennsylvania lawyers. Earlier this month, a judge dismissed the claim in the case of a young girl who was tortured and starved to death.
A failure to act by county and school officials didn’t put the girl in more danger than she already was, that judge ruled.
In the case of the fire, the Philadelphia Housing Authority also beat back the argument claiming PHA continued to put too many people in its apartments, even when transfers were requested. Mechanics were blamed, too, for allegedly documenting the detectors as working when they weren’t, which prevented a 24-hour timeframe to fix them from being activated.
“Plaintiffs were aware that their apartment was overcrowded for at least five years before the fire,” Alejandro wrote. “As such, the property manager defendants’ actions of renewing the leases ‘were too far removed from the eventual harm to be deemed a fairly direct cause (of the harm suffered) by a reasonable juror.’”
PHA defeated the Monell claim alleging a “no-transfer” policy put too many people in Unit B. Allowing overcrowding is too far removed from the action of a child starting a fire to allege causation, Alejandro wrote.
Philadelphia lost its Monell dismissal argument because it merely argued if there were no “state-created danger,” then there was no Monell violation.
“Plaintiffs’ Monell claims, as pled, are premised on the City’s alleged failure to promulgate adequate policies and procedures for ensuring the safety of children in homes under the auspices of DHS and the City’s failure to train its employees with respect to the same,” Alejandro wrote.
“The claims are different and have different requirements.”
