‘Killer Show’ Author Barylick Shares Tale of 7-year Litigation Following America’s Deadliest Rock Concert
John Barylick (’77) delivers the annual Max M. Shapiro Lecture
Horrifying images, a stunning death toll, and poignant recollections from survivors captured the attention of millions of TV news viewers to the story of the deadly Station fire in Rhode Island in 2003, but attorney John Barylick’s engaging recounting of the seven years of litigation that followed is the piece fewer people know about. In a lecture Monday, Nov. 3, 2014, at Boston University School of Law, Barylick wove an intriguing narrative of the investigation and the resulting $176 million verdict.
The annual Max M. Shapiro Lecture, BU Law’s principal endowed lectureship and a tribute to the memory of Max Shapiro (’33), drew dozens of faculty, staff, and students, as well as Shapiro’s son, also a BU Law alumnus, and other members of his family.
BU Law alumnus Barylick was a lead attorney in the plaintiffs’ litigation that followed the Feb. 20, 2003, fire, in which 100 people died and hundreds of other concertgoers were injured. He has since written a book about the fire and resulting litigation, Killer Show: The Station Nightclub Fire, America’s Deadliest Rock Concert, published in 2012 by University Press of New England. His lecture told that story.
“When negligence and greed overcome any concern for safety, this kind of thing can happen,” Barylick said.
He gave the audience a digital tour of The Station, the West Warwick, Rhode Island, roadhouse where the fire occurred. He explained the way the venue’s entrance formed a 33-inch-wide “pinch point” that effectively cut off the only exit most people in the building at the time knew about, the inward-opening door at the band entrance that had violated fire codes three times in as many years, and the tricky layout in the rest of the building. All of the building’s inherent dangers were amplified, he said, when the timeline for escape was narrowed to just over a minute and a half from the time the first sparks flew.
“If you were to design a space, diabolically intended to trap as many people as you could, this would be a good way to do it,” Barylick said.
Even though a fire station was just a half-mile away, and even though a police officer was at the concert, they couldn’t get to all the trapped people in enough time to save them all. Barylick showed a video, filmed by a local TV cameraman, that captured the 15-second pyrotechnic display during a concert by the band Great White, and the cameraman’s own rapid retreat out of the building, through that tricky pinch point, all in less than two minutes. Many people who didn’t catch on as fast as that cameraman, Barylick said, were caught in a pile of “human dominoes” at the doorway. They could not all be pulled free before they died.
“People wanted heads to roll,” Barylick said. “People were injured, many of them horrifically.”
Ultimately, only three people faced criminal charges: the band manager and two owners of the club. “The people of Rhode Island thought justice had not been done,” Barylick said.
In the civil litigation that ensued, the real problem was how to best get restitution to all the affected families. Additionally, the prospect of many high-dollar cases brought out “the best and worst of the Rhode Island bar,” Barylick said, such as so-called “advertising attorneys,” who tried to capitalize on the larger firms’ work. A steering committee was created to effectively handle the many plaintiffs’ cases and their many attorneys. They all faced a problem: how to collect enough money to compensate all of their clients when most everyone involved in the fire directly had little money – in Barylick’s words, they were “judgment-proof.”
Before the plaintiffs could begin to collect, the attorneys had to get agreement of every single plaintiff on the allocation of the settlement, Barylick said, and “one of the hardest tasks was getting complete buy-in.” An appointed “special master” established a point-based system and helped explain to frequently distraught plaintiffs why certain types of damages were “worth” more.
Ultimately, creative thinking and going up the chain to defendants who had both responsibility and money led to multiple multi-million-dollar settlements. For example, the TV station that filmed the fire answered for the actions of its cameraman, who has long maintained that he did nothing to slow others’ exit – contrary to witnesses’ statements. Their $30 million settlement “sent shockwaves through the defense camp … and other mediations followed,” Barylick said.
According to the plaintiffs’ theory, Fire Marshal Denis Larocque was liable – and thus his employers were, too – for having set The Station’s safe occupancy rate higher and higher, until it was no longer safe; for failing to test the flammable soundproofing materials used in The Station; and for repeatedly looking the other way when The Station reinstalled its unsafe inward-opening door. The plaintiffs’ attorneys showed Rhode Island and West Warwick officials a copy of the news video synched to the haunting recording from a man who died inside The Station, and got a $20 million settlement.
Barylick finally outlined the investigative work went into the pursuit and eventual settlement with the companies that made the two types of foam the owners of The Station had used to line the walls of their highly flammable stage space. Vivid video from a fire testing lab illustrated just how deadly the unusual combination of polyethylene and polyurethane foams was once ignited. They were finally persuasive on a theory of “duty to warn of foreseeable misuse.” After seven years and the pursuit of many defendants, a settlement was reached and the families and victims were compensated, as much as they could be under the circumstances.
After his lecture, Barylick visited with attendees at a reception, where copies of his book were also sold.
Reported by Jaime Margolis (’16)