$100M lawsuit: Family sues after boy killed in Troy explosion

SOUTHFIELD, Mich. (FOX 2) - After Thomas Cooper died earlier this year while inside a hyperbaric chamber in Troy, his family retained Fieger Law to represent them in court. On Monday, the law firm announced it is filing a $100 million lawsuit on behalf of the family.

Fieger Law announced the lawsuit on Monday, seven months after initially being retained by the family. In announcing the lawsuit, Fieger Law named eight defendants in the lawsuit, including the four people who were charged in criminal court.

Tamela Peterson, Gary Marken, Jeffrey Mosteller, and Aleta Moffitt were all charged in connection to young Thomas' tragic death. Peterson was the founder and CEO of the Oxford Center where Thomas was undergoing treatment when the chamber exploded and burned the child, killing him. Marken was Peterson's management assistant. Mosteller was the center's safety manager. All three of those defendants are facing murder charges.

Moffitt, who was operating the hyperbaric chamber when it exploded, is charged with involuntary manslaughter and intentionally placing false information on a medical record as a medical provider. 

The other defendants named in Fieger's lawsuit including Sechrist Industries, who made the chamber, Oxford Hyperbaric Oxygen Therapy Center, Oxford Kids Foundation, and Office Venture Troy, LLC. 

The law firm is suing for $100,000 in damages and for answers from those responsible.

During Monday's press conference announcing the lawsuit, Fieger Law Managing Partner James Harrington said the chamber that exploded and killed Thomas were not operating with safety for anyone in mind.

"This is very important for a lot of reasons. Because this is a problem. These machines are a problem. The people operating them are a problem. And we saw what these problems can result in," Harrington said. "This was absolutely preventable and this should never have happened."

Harrington said there were no warning signs anywhere on the chamber and that the company knows how deadly the machines are.

"The absence of any and all warnings should have all of us very, very concerned because the placement of warnings, the use of warnings by all defendants in this case, is crucial to understanding how and why this happens," Harrington said. "The industry knows that these machines can turn into literally a firebomb in an instant. But yet there isn't even one sticker. There isn't even one warning that's provided."

The attorney the lawsuit is about getting justice for Thomas.

"It's our hope with this case that we're able to get, justice for Thomas's family as well as invoke change in this entire industry. And it's no small feat. It's going to take a lot of work," Harrington said.

In the seven months since the family first hired the Fieger Law Firm. Harrington said investigators have been working to learn everything about what went wrong before the fatal explosion. He said the chamber, which is pressurized and provides oxygen at a greater level then normal atmospheric pressure, had no system in place to extinguish a fire.

"These machines, they were designed and manufactured without fire suppression. They were designed and manufactured without any type of deluge system, which is a water system that can help extinguish a fire. There were no automatic fire detection systems. There was no effective emergency extraction system, which would have been helpful because, you know, Thomas's mother was, severely burned, while Thomas was burning alive, trying to get him out," he said.

Harrington said there is still more evidence to uncover.

"It's going to take time to get all of the truth here," he said.

The bigger issue, Harrington said, is that the chambers are designed just to make money.

"These things are designed and manufactured and sold and used for the sole purpose of profits to get bodies in, bodies out and get the next body in and next body out and take the money," he said.

As the lawsuit moves forward, Harrington is urging the companies that make these kinds of chambers to put safety first.

"With the billions and billions of dollars that you take from American families, allocate some of that money to safety. Stop putting profits first and put American families safety. Number one and then go from there. Profits are good – making money is good – but at the expense of American families is bad. Stop it. That's the message," he said. "People need to be warned. Have them designed with the proper safety. Allocate some of the billions of dollars that you make towards safety with except for it. And don't keep an eye solely on shareholders, board of directors, and profits and bottom line, make things safer. There are things that, the FDA has approved, for treatment. Make sure that they're being used for that and not some, you know, experiment projects on young children and American families."

The backstory:

The four suspects are still going through court hearings. Last week, they were in court for a preliminary hearing where an expert testified that a static spark likely caused the blast. International hyperbaric safety expert Francois Burman testified that Thomas was not wearing a grounding strap, a basic safety device to prevent static buildup and a fire.

Burman described this as a serious failure while explaining what he observed while Thomas was inside the chamber.

"The child was moving towards the end," said Burman. "The child moved quite a lot, quite violently, but certainly with lots of energy, and you could see very clearly when he moved the sheet off the actual mattress. We know that the mattress is a conductive item. It’s built conductive for a particular purpose, and then we saw him turn over, and his knee appeared to touch the mattress, and that’s when the initial spark occurred."

Dig deeper:

Experts on hyperbaric chamber treatments were consulted for the investigation, and Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel said "horrifying and simple conclusions were reached."

Nessel said the Oxford Center routinely operated sensitive and lethal, dangerous hyperbaric chambers beyond their expected service lifetime and in complete disregard of vital safety measures and practices considered essential by medical and technical professionals.

She called it a business that was purely for cash.

In addition to lacking property safety measures, Peterson is accused of interfering with the investigation and criticizing Cooper while he was on fire. Sources say Peterson allegedly shared CCTV photos of the boy and made disturbing comments about him.

"If my leg was on fire, I would at least try to hit it and put it out. He just laid there and did nothing," Peterson allegedly said.

Magistrate Elizabeth Chiappelli made reference to the claim of Peterson sharing photos from inside the center when Peterson was arraigned.