The parents of a boy killed in January in a fiery explosion inside a hyperbaric oxygen chamber filed a lawsuit Monday, alleging the 5-year-old perished as a result of “corporate greed.”
The suit filed in Oakland County circuit court in Michigan calls Thomas Cooper’s death the result of “callous indifference to human life” by the manufacturer of the oxygen chamber and the alternative medicine clinic that operated it.
It said Thomas’ parents, who live in Royal Oak, Michigan, were not adequately warned that hyperbaric oxygen therapy could pose a serious risk of death should a fire break out, and said the hyperbaric chamber was designed without an effective way to extract someone during an emergency.
“The Defendants knew with absolute certainty that if a fire occurred in one of its chambers, the patient inside would be burned alive, with zero chance of survival,” the lawsuit stated.
James and Juana Cooper had taken their son to the Oxford Center in the Detroit suburb of Troy multiple times to receive hyperbaric oxygen therapy for sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, according to the family’s attorney, James Harrington.
“Not only were there zero warnings from any of the defendants that are named in this lawsuit, it’s actually quite the contrary. There was nothing but encouragement, support, to get Thomas into a chamber for the sole purpose of profit,” Harrington said Monday in his first interview about the lawsuit. “Had they known and been given the choice, then they could have weighed whether or not this was something they would subject him to.”
Thomas was killed on Jan. 31 when a blaze started inside the hyperbaric chamber where he was undergoing treatment. Harrington told NBC News that Thomas’ mother rushed toward the chamber when the fire ignited, burning her arm in an unsuccessful attempt to save her son as he burned alive in front of her.
Thomas’ family declined to speak about the lawsuit, which names eight parties as defendants: the Oxford Center; its CEO and three of its staff members; the Oxford Kids Foundation, a nonprofit associated with the center; Office Ventures Troy I, the owners of the property that housed the Oxford Center; and Sechrist Industries, the manufacturer of the hyperbaric chamber.
“The death of 5-years-old Thomas Cooper was not a tragic accident. It was a foreseeable, inevitable, and virtually certain result of Defendants’ callous indifference to human life,” the suit reads. “Young Thomas Cooper paid the ultimate price for Defendants’ corporate greed.”
The lawsuit seeks more than $100 million in damages. The defendants and their attorneys either declined to comment or did not immediately respond to requests from NBC News.
The Oxford Center employees named in the civil lawsuit have also been charged criminally in Thomas’ death. Oxford Center CEO and founder Tamela Peterson, its facility safety manager, Jeffrey Mosteller, and its primary management assistant, Gary Marken, each face one count of second-degree murder and one count of involuntary manslaughter. The fourth staff member, Aleta Moffitt, who was operating the hyperbaric chamber at the time, was charged with one count of involuntary manslaughter and one count of intentionally placing false information in medical records.
All four have pleaded not guilty.
At hearings last week to determine whether there was enough evidence for a criminal trial to proceed, a hyperbaric chamber safety expert who visited the Oxford Center after the fire and reviewed video footage testified that static electricity sparked the deadly blaze, according to the Detroit Free Press. The expert said evidence showed staff failed to follow basic safety standards that could have prevented the fire.
Hyperbaric chambers are pressurized, tubelike devices that deliver air that consists of 100% oxygen, which helps patients heal more quickly from certain injuries or illnesses but also creates a highly combustible environment.
Monday’s lawsuit says the Food and Drug Administration has approved hyperbaric oxygen treatment for 13 conditions, such as carbon monoxide poisoning, foot wounds related to diabetes and decompression sickness in divers.
The Oxford Center operated two locations in Michigan prior to Thomas’ death. On its website, the center says it treats over 100 conditions, including autism, Alzheimer’s, dyslexia and cancer. The FDA does not recognize hyperbaric oxygen therapy for those conditions, nor has it approved the therapy for the conditions for which Thomas’ family sought treatment.
The boy’s death put a spotlight on the largely unregulated use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy in the wellness industry, which has promoted the use of the chambers for anti-aging, mental health and other benefits. The FDA has warned that some claims about what hyperbaric chambers can do are “unproven” and encourages patients to only go to facilities accredited by the Undersea and Hyperbaric Medical Society. The Oxford Center is not on the medical society’s accredited list.
Harrington told NBC News that Thomas’ parents are reminded of their son everywhere they go.
“It’s never OK, no matter how a child passes,” he said.” But the manner in which Thomas passed, helpless inside of a chamber, burning to death, able to see his mother on the outside — I literally can’t think of anything worse.”
