Riverhead Town wins dismissal in lawsuit over fatal Second Street fire

A state judge has dismissed the Town of Riverhead from one of two lawsuits filed after the fatal fire at 46 East Second Street in Riverhead, where five people died in November 2021. 

In a March 13 order, State Supreme Court Justice Alison Napolitano granted summary judgment to the town in the lawsuit filed by the estates of a tenant and her nephew.

The order means the claims against the town in that case will not go to trial.

Summary judgment is a ruling a judge can make without a trial when the judge finds there are no key facts in dispute that require a jury to decide the issue. In this case, Napolitano ruled that, under the law, the town could not be held responsible on the claims made by the plaintiffs.

The claims against the property owner, Carmela Cannella, were not dismissed in the March 13 order.

The fire happened late at night on Nov. 16, 2021, at a large old three-story house on East Second Street. Five members of a Guatemalan family died in the blaze: Zonia Rivera Mendoza, 41; her daughter, Andrea Isamar González, 16; her son, Carlos Cifredo Peñate Rivera, 24; and her nephews, Douglas Edgardo Rivera Aguirre, 24, and Carlos Alberto Ramos Aguirre, 22. 

Police said all were trapped in a front bedroom of the third-floor apartment, where they apparently sought refuge from the fast-moving fire. Their only way out, the central stairway, collapsed in the blaze. Part of the third floor also collapsed.

The victims were identified by the Suffolk County Medical Examiner using dental records, fingerprints, and DNA. The cause of death for all five was smoke inhalation. 

Other people in the house, including Cannella and second-floor tenants, escaped through a rear door. The fire destroyed the century-old house, which was later torn down. 

Suffolk Police said in March 2022 that cigarettes caused the fire.

The lawsuit against the town claimed Riverhead was negligent in the way it handled rental inspections and code enforcement at the property. But Napolitano ruled that those actions were taken by the town in its  governmental role and not in a proprietary role. She also ruled that the plaintiffs did not show the town had a special legal duty to protect the victims beyond the duty it owes the public in general.

The judge’s order says the home’s rental permit had expired in March 2020, no renewal application was filed, town officials made rental verification visits, and Cannella was issued summonses in October 2021 for operating the apartments without a rental permit. But the judge found that was still not enough to make the town legally responsible for the deaths. 

“The decision is very straightforward and resolves the claims against the Town in the manner expected,” Riverhead Town Attorney Erik Howard said in an email Monday afternoon. “The fire and loss of life it caused were tragic, but … assigning fault to the Town would be inappropriate and not supported by law. Imposing a special duty upon the Town would effectively make the Town and Code Enforcement affirmatively responsible for the interior safety of rental units on a continuous and uninterrupted basis. Such a responsibility would be impossible to administer, ” he wrote.

“It should be noted that following this tragedy, the Town did implement code designed to enhance safety of rental units, specifically, by prohibiting third floor rental units in the absence of fire sprinklers, proof of homeowner’s or other liability insurance, and an additional means of egress,” Howard said. “Additionally, the Town reduced the term of rental permits from 2 years to 1 years in order to permit annual inspections of rental units and provide more frequent review of interior conditions of rental properties.”

Napolitano also denied a request by the plaintiffs to amend the plaintiffs’ notices of claim to add a claim for conscious pain and suffering. 

The lawsuit was brought by Jason Hernandez, administrator of the estate of Rivera, and Matthew Kiernan, public administrator of the estate of Ramos.

A separate lawsuit filed by Ruben A. Gonzalez Godoy, the father of Andrea González, is still pending. The judge had previously ordered that the two cases would be joined for trial, but the lawsuits remained separate for other purposes, with separate motion records. The town filed a similar summary judgment motion in the Gonzalez lawsuit. The motion in that case has not yet been decided, according to court records as of this morning.