New lawsuits target the engineering firm whose principals wrote the owner of a southern Ontario hotel and retail concourse that the roof parking deck above the shops was structurally sound two months before part of it collapsed June 23, killing two women.
The families of Doloris Perizzolo, 74, and Lucie Aylwin, 37, filed suit Oct. 1 in Ontario Superior Court of Justice in Sault Ste. Marie for about $5 million against engineer M.R. Wright & Associates Co. Ltd., Sault Ste. Marie, and other defendants.
The accident dramatizes the significant liability posed to engineers by catastrophic collapses of structures that have been inspected using only observation or other limited methods.
Also named in the lawsuit were the city of Elliot Lake, Ontario, and Robert Nazarian and his company, Eastwood Mall Inc. The firm is an owner of the Algo Centre Mall, in Elliot Lake, about 375 miles northwest of Toronto.
It isn't clear exactly how much liability an engineer takes on during a concerted inspection of a structure after it has been completed. Design professionals in the U.S. have sometimes stressed that the inspections performed during construction do not place them in the role of providing quality control and supervising construction. But the issue isn't completely settled, and inspections long after construction will probably be judged on a different legal standard.
The collapse in Canada came suddenly, even if its origins were years earlier.
The 32-year-old mall was part of a steel-framed structure that included a connected hotel, a ground level retail concourse and a parking level above the stores. Area residents and store owners told local media that the mall had been leaking regularly over the years.
Both Perizzolo and Aylwin were standing near a lottery kiosk inside the Algo Centre Mall. The difficulty of searching the debris, and the problems of getting proper equipment, prompted some recriminations in Ontario.