Report: Accord Reached On Testing Foam In GREAT WHITE Nightclub Fire

March 15, 2005

Tracy Breton of the Providence Journal is reporting that Superior Court Judge Francis J. Darigan Jr. announced yesterday that prosecutors and lawyers for the three men charged with the deaths of 100 people at The Station nightclub have reached an agreement on further testing of polyurethane foam, the kind that lined the walls and ceiling of the club.

After meeting in chambers with the lawyers for an hour, Darigan took the bench and said that lawyers for the defendants in the manslaughter case have "stipulated" that foam that prosecutors bought from American Foam in Johnston after the fire "is substantially similar" to the six pieces of undamaged foam seized from the basement of the nightclub after the fire.

This will presumably make more foam available for testing, not just for prosecutors and lawyers for the three criminal defendants — Michael A. Derderian, Jeffrey A. Derderian and Daniel M. Biechele — but also by lawyers representing victims of the fire and their survivors in a raft of civil suits filed in U.S. District Court.

Lawyers for the victims and their families have been trying, unsuccessfully, for months to get access to some of the foam seized from the charred ruins of the West Warwick nightclub, but have been rebuffed by prosecutors.

Read more at Providence Journal (free registration required).

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