Fire Law Blog Fire Service and Public Safety Legal Issues Blog by Curt Varone
The estate of a former teacher convicted of sexual assault, has filed a wrongful death suit against a Connecticut fire department and a private ambulance company. However, the department claims the estate sued the wrong entity and is seeking to be dismissed from the suit.
Thomas Bavedas died in December, 2009 due to seizures while being transported between medical facilities. The lawsuit accuses Middletown Fire Department and Hunter’s Ambulance of Meriden of numerous counts of negligence.
Bavedas, 40, a teacher in Bridgeport, had been convicted of sexually assaulting a 15-year-old girl. He was awaiting trial on nine counts of voyeurism, nine counts of risk of injury to a minor, and child pornography charges after he secretly videotaped young female students in his classroom while they were undressing in the classroom closet for a Halloween pageant. Thomas also faced a civil suit filed in Federal court by one of the girls he secretly videotaped.
Bavedas suffered a stroke in January 2009. He was in a coma and determined to be incompetent to stand trial. In early December, 2009 he suffered multiple seizures at Connecticut Valley Hospital, and died en route to Middlesex Hospital.
The Middletown Fire Department claims they did not respond to the incident, and therefore are not liable. The incident occurred in the response area of the South Fire District, not the Middletown Fire Department. The Plaintiffs’ attorney, Jeremy Virgil, alleges that Middletown Fire is liable because it oversees the South Fire District.
The suit seeks compensatory damages in excess of $15,000, and alleges both the fire department and ambulance company were negligent because personnel on the initial responding units were neither trained nor equipped to deal with someone suffering from seizures.
