LARGEST PERSONAL INJURY VERDICT IN WYOMING HISTORY AWARDED
A U.S. District Court jury in December 2003 awarded $17.5 million, the largest personal injury verdict in Wyoming’s history, in the wrongful death and personal injury trial of a North Carolina doctor and his wife who were gassed by carbon monoxide at a Teton Village, Wyoming, hotel. Dr. Randall Williams, a urologist from Columbus, North Carolina, and his wife were attending a medical conference in August 2001 at the Snake River Lodge & Spa in Teton Village, a hotel that Vail Resorts owned and managed through its subsidiary corporations. Dr. Williams was killed, and his wife, a cardiac surgery nurse, suffered permanent brain injury from the poisoning.
The hot water for the hotel was supplied by a propane-fired boiler, which was equipped with a safety shutdown switch to prevent dangerous levels of carbon monoxide from being produced. The hotel had located a dryer vent too close to the air intake for the boiler. Lint from the dryer vents was sucked into the boiler's air intake, clogged the burner screen, and thereby starved the boiler of needed oxygen. With insufficient oxygen, combustion of the propane was incomplete, and carbon monoxide was produced as a byproduct of the incomplete burning. Under those circumstances, the safety shutdown switch would activate and turn off the boiler so that carbon monoxide would not be produced.
When the safety switch was triggered, it caused the boiler to shut down, which then resulted in complaints from guests that their showers were cold. The hotel’s response was to place a jumper, or electrical bypass, across the safety switch (thereby disabling it) so that the boiler would not turn off. Hot showers were preserved, but guest safety was dangerously sacrificed. A perfectly safe hot water boiler had been converted into a deadly carbon monoxide generator. When Dr. and Mrs. Williams checked into the hotel, they were assigned to a room directly above the exhaust for the boiler, which had a safety shutdown switch that had been jumpered for more than four months. The carbon monoxide, a colorless, odorless gas, was sucked into their room through the air conditioning ducts, and they were asphyxiated.
Bob Schuster, together with Nick Murdock of the Murdock Law Firm, P.C. of Casper, Wyoming, represented Mrs. Williams for her personal injury case and the family of Dr. Williams for the wrongful death case.
