As lawsuits mount, Gabriel House owner doesn’t have liability insurance. It’s not required

Gabriel House owner Dennis Etzkorn is staring down at least eight civil lawsuits after 10 people perished and dozens more were injured in a fire at his Fall River assisted living facility. But Etzkorn doesn’t have liability insurance, according to two attorneys taking action against him.

Even more, it’s not required for assisted living facilities in Massachusetts, unlike other businesses such as bars.

Attorney Robin Gouveia, who represents former Gabriel House resident Steven Oldrid in his pursuit for damages, said there isn‘t coverage by Etzkorn’s insurance company to pay the victims suing him — dependent on the outcomes of those pending cases in Bristol County Superior Court.

Etzkorn does, however, have property insurance on the building — a former motel built in the 1960s — located at 261 Oliver Street.

A focus of the lawsuits is the building’s sprinkler system, which did not work properly throughout the building on the night of the fire, sources have told MassLive, including in the room where the fire started.

Gouveia, of personal injury law firm d’Oliveira & Associates, said they’re “working several different aspects” to determine how fire victims could potentially recover damages.

One of those avenues is going after Etzkorn “directly and personally,” she said. Other possibilities include seeing if there is a “legal doctrine” — or judicial precedence — to allow the victims to access the insurance policy he does have. There could also be “additional defendants who may hold some responsibility to the victims.”

“We don’t have full answers to this yet but are aggressively working on it,” Gouveia said this week.

Oldrid, her client, suffered smoke inhalation and respiratory distress in his third-floor room, and was ultimately found unconscious on the floor by first responders. He is 69 and uses a power chair.

Etzkorn, through his spokesperson, did not respond to requests for comment for this story.

Liability insurance not required in Mass. for assisted living

Liability insurance is not a requirement to be certified as an assisted living residence under state regulations, according to the Massachusetts Executive Office of Aging and Independence, the agency that oversees assisted living facilities.

The office said regulations “focus on the safety and wellbeing of residents.”

The absence of liability insurance when something goes wrong means individuals seeking damages could have a harder time recovering them — and it’s more likely they’ll go after the owner’s personal assets.

“We have to have insurance on our cars but a facility where vulnerable people reside doesn’t need to apparently,” said Attorney Steve Sabra. “The owner protected the property he owned but not the people that lived there.”

Massachusetts businesses that are licensed to serve alcohol are required to carry liquor liability insurance, for example.

Sabra represents two fire survivors and has also filed a wrongful death suit on behalf of a deceased resident’s son.

Several U.S. states do require liability coverage for assisted living facilities, including California, Virginia and the District of Columbia.

Lawsuits against Gabriel House

At least eight lawsuits have been filed against Etzkorn in Bristol County Superior Court — and assigned to Judge Raffi Yessayan — since the July 13 fire that injured dozens of residents in addition to the 10 deaths. The most recent suit was filed this week, on Oct. 7.

Several of the lawsuits also name Fire Systems Inc. as a defendant. Gabriel House had contracted with the Dartmouth-based fire safety vendor for annual sprinkler and fire alarm inspections since 2014.

The company, which is being represented in court by global law firm Holland & Knight, did not respond to questions about its status with liability insurance. But it offered the following statement:

“FSI has conducted periodic inspections and testing of the Gabriel House fire alarm and sprinkler system since 2014, in accordance with its service agreement with the property owner, all applicable National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) standards, and local requirements,” a spokesperson said. “FSI did not install — nor was it contracted to maintain — Gabriel House’s system. Furthermore, FSI does not manufacture fire sprinkler components and is not responsible for identifying or evaluating manufacturer recalls."

Etzkorn doesn’t yet have a lawyer listed and has sparingly communicated with media via a spokesperson.

All of the lawsuits, asserting negligence by the defendants, echo each other. They claim when the accidental fire ignited in a resident’s second-floor room, the sprinkler system didn’t work properly, ultimately fueling a five-alarm blaze that spread across the building, filling it with black smoke.

They also claim the facility wasn’t properly managed or supervised, and that emergency plans and procedures weren’t in place. One lawsuit went as far as calling Gabriel House a “death trap” ahead of the fatal fire.

In a previous statement, Etzkorn said, “All that matters right now is getting to the bottom of why this happened and helping our residents’ loved ones in this darkest of times. Those dual tasks will remain my only priorities to the exclusion of all else.”

There were quarterly visual inspections of the building’s sprinkler system, he said, and the latest one happened five days before the fire, on July 8. He said the sprinklers were found to be in working order that day.

But recent reporting by MassLive revealed that Etzkorn was missing a critical, state required five-year inspection that assures all internal parts of the sprinkler system are working properly, according to sources with knowledge of the investigation. Several lawsuits also claim that Gabriel House’s sprinkler heads were recalled decades ago and not replaced.

According to Fall River Fire Department records, Gabriel House passed annual inspections in the six years leading up to the fire.

State fire officials have said the cause of the fire is undetermined. But they’ve narrowed it down to either an electrical or mechanical failure of an oxygen concentrator or the improper use or disposal of smoking materials.

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