A Shasta County jury has found the Sundial Lodge liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit for a blaze that killed resident Jenell Foster in a room fire on March 23, 2021. The jury awarded about $6.4 million to Foster’s four adult children. Photo by Mike Chapman
A Shasta County jury has found the Sundial Lodge liable in a wrongful-death lawsuit for a blaze that killed resident Jenell Foster in a room fire on March 23, 2021. The jury awarded about $6.4 million to Foster’s four adult children.
The lack of a smoke alarm – and the subsequent death of a resident in a fire – has cost a local motel more than $6 million.
A Shasta County jury this week awarded $6.39 million to the adult children of Jenell Foster after the Redding woman died from burn injuries she suffered in a March 2021 fire at the Sundial Lodge.
“This verdict not only vindicates our client but also sends a powerful message about safety and accountability,” Brandon Storment, an attorney and partner with the law firm of Barr & Mudford, said in a press release.
Storment was part of the trial team that included Catie Barr of the Redding law firm, and attorney Anthony Garilli of Dreyer, Babich, Buccola, Wood and Campora of Sacramento.
“We are thrilled with the outcome of this trial, which reaffirms our commitment to standing up for our clients and seeking justice on their behalf,” Barr said in a statement.
Storment, Barr and Garilli represented Foster’s four children, Jeffrey Foster, Tishamika Lee, Jessica Foster and Bryce Avant in the wrongful-death civil suit filed in Shasta County Superior Court. The six-week trial started Nov. 5 with Judge Benjamin Hanna presiding.
Redding attorneys Catie Barr and Brandon Storment of the Barr & Mudford law firm were part of the trial team that won a civil suit against the Sundial Lodge. (Photos courtesy of Barr & Mudford)
Foster, 67, had been staying in a second-floor room at the motel on Market Street for several months as part of Project Roomkey. The state and county program provided rooms for people who didn’t have a home and were vulnerable to COVID-19 during the pandemic.
A toaster fire broke out in Foster’s room about 5:50 p.m. March 23, 2021, that severely injured her. An ambulance took the unconscious woman to Mercy Medical Center before she was airlifted to the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento where she died the next day.
An obituary published by Dignity Memorial said Foster was once elected as the Sweeheart’s Ball Queen when she attended Shasta High School and was part of the student council and Pompon team, among other activities. The obituary said she also ran track, played softball and began her own drill team. A celebration of life was held for her on June 5, 2021, at Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Park in Redding.
“Our mother found her calling in always helping others even though she may have not had much herself,” the family wrote.
Foster was a preschool teacher at the Martin Luther King Jr. Center and went on to become a supervisor for the Pacific Bell Telephone Co. in Oakland, the obituary said. She later became a medical billing administrator at Mercy hospital.
A key finding in the trial was the room’s lack of a smoke detector, as confirmed through an investigation by Assistant Fire Marshal Ryan Masterson of the Redding Fire Department, Storment said.
“The plaintiffs (Foster’s children) alleged the Sundial Lodge was negligent due to the absence of a proper, functioning smoke detector in Ms. Foster’s room,” Storment said in his news release. “Due to the negligence, the jury awarded Ms. Foster’s family $6.39 million.”
In a phone interview, Storment said the defense contended there was a smoke alarm in the room, however he said Masterson didn’t find one.
“He’s the one who conducted the fire investigation for the city and he testified at the trial that he searched through the room and all the debris trying to locate a smoke detector and he didn’t locate a smoke detector and he didn’t find one in the rubble,” Storment said.
Storment said the Sundial Lodge’s attorney countered during the trial that the motel did have a smoke detector in the room and it was tested weekly.
“But they had no documents or no records to support any purchase of a detector. They had no records of testing smoke detectors,” Storment said.
The Shasta County Superior Court building at 1515 Court St. in Redding.
In addition to the Sundial Lodge, the initial defendants included the Shasta County Department of Health and Human Services, the county’s Housing and Community Action Agency and the county’s Department of Support Services through their connection with Project Roomkey. However, those agencies were quickly dismissed from the suit because they didn’t do anything wrong, Storment said.
“At the very beginning of the case … once discovery was done, it was apparent that the county had done everything that they were supposed to and so we dismissed them early on,” the attorney said.
The sole defendant was the Sundial Lodge, owned by Mary Patel, who attended every day of the trial, Storment said. The business was represented by the Fresno law firm of McCormick, Barstow, Sheppard, Wayte & Carruth. Attempts to contact Patel for comment were unsuccessful Friday and Saturday, and the law firm also didn’t immediately respond for reaction.
Storment described the trial as complex – not so much for determining liability and fault – but for deciding injury and monetary damages.
Storment said there’s a new law that allows for someone who perishes in a wrongful-death case to pursue pre-death pain and suffering damages.
“And so before that recent change in the law, if you died, you didn’t get pain and suffering damages or your estate didn’t get pain and suffering,” he explained.
Due to that change, Storment said both sides in the Sundial Lodge case brought medical experts and burn doctors to testify about a person’s pain from second-degree and third-degree burns and their experience before death.
“The defense position was that (Foster) sustained third-degree burns over her entire body almost instantaneously. And so (their) expert’s position … was that she would not have experienced pain prior to her death,” Storment said.
However, the attorneys representing Foster brought in their burn expert, Dr. Granger Wong of UC Davis, whose opinion was the opposite.
“(Wong’s) opinion was contrary to that, which is that Ms. Foster had suffered a mix of second- and third-degree burns, and that she would have experienced excruciating pain prior to her death,” Storment said. “That’s where it got kind of complex with the medical testimony and the battle of the experts.”
Storment said the jury determined that the woman did experience pain before she died and was awarded $3 million as part of the overall settlement for her pre-death suffering.
Storment described the jury’s final ruling as a “major win” whose implications could extend to future, related cases to make sure businesses such as hotels and motels protect their patrons.
“That’s really what Jenell’s family was looking for. Obviously, they feel vindicated by the verdict but it’s not going to bring their mom back. They’d rather have their mom than all the money in the world,” Storment said. “They think that it will protect other families from having to go through something similar hopefully in the future.”
Storment added that the trial’s outcome shows the “importance of holding parties accountable for their actions and protecting the rights of individuals.”
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