A resident of the Iowa building that partially collapsed last week filed a lawsuit Monday against its owner, the city of Davenport, and engineers and contractors who worked on the building, alleging that they knew it was failing but intentionally kept tenants in the dark, even though their lives were in danger.
The complaint, filed in Scott County court, comes eight days after the shocking structural failure at 324 Main St., known as The Davenport.
Since the May 28 collapse, nine people have been rescued. City officials said Monday that the bodies of three people — Branden Colvin Sr, 42; Ryan Hitchcock, 51; and Daniel Prien, 60 — were recovered from the rubble over the weekend.
Davenport police said Monday that all had been accounted for and that no other residents were still missing.
A copy of the complaint, filed by Dayna Feuerbach, who lived in the building at the time of the collapse, was shared with NBC News by the plaintiff’s lawyer.
The filing said that the structural damage that caused the collapse had been “worsening for years.”
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The building’s owner, Andrew Wold, and contractors and engineers who performed work on the building “recognized the imminent danger residents faced” yet “allowed the building to deteriorate while failing to warn residents that their lives were in danger.”
The complaint accused Wold and his companies of failing to maintain the building and keep his tenants safe, and also accused the city of failing to heed repeated warnings about the building’s integrity.
“Despite knowledge of the inevitable nature of this collapse, neither Wold, the City of Davenport, nor the licensed engineers ordered the necessary evacuation of the building,” it said.
The lawsuit names as defendants Wold; his companies Davenport Hotel LLC and Andrew Wold Investments LLC; Select Structural Engineering LLC, an engineering firm Wold hired to assess his building and who deemed the property structurally safe as recently as last month; contractor Bi-State Masonry; and the city of Davenport. It also names the building’s prior owner, Waukee Investments LLC, and prior management company, Parkwild Properties.
“This collapse was preventable. The negligence, gross negligence, and the reckless, outrageous, willful and wanton conduct of the Defendants caused this devastating tragedy, and they must be held liable,” the complaint said.
The suit comes after a tense week during which city officials fielded criticism over why the building wasn’t shut down or vacated earlier.
The city last week released a cache of documents revealing 145 interactions between Davenport officials, Wold and the property over the past three years.
Just four days before the collapse, Select Structural Engineering released a report with the city that said large patches of brick “appear ready to fall imminently” and warned that it was at risk of crumbling.
Source: | This article originally belongs to Nbcnews.com
