BELLEVILLE – A St. Louis business filed a $45 million lawsuit against a repair company, claiming the company failed to properly diagnose a malfunctioning boiler that caused a fire.
Deli Star Corporation filed a lawsuit in the St. Clair County Circuit Court against Hennan Boiler Services, Inc and Kevin Robert Hennen, citing negligence and breach of contract.
According to the lawsuit, on Dec. 28, 2020, the Deli Star Corporation hired Hennen Boiler Services to diagnose and repair a boiler at its place of business. The boiler allegedly kept shutting down while attempting to ignite the gas flame. Hennen employees allegedly determined the issue to be the boiler's pilot assembly and repaired it.
On Dec. 31, 2020, Deli Star personnel noticed the boiler was still shutting down instead of igniting the flame and contacted business owner Kevin Hennen directly. Hennen allegedly instructed Deli Star to perform a hard shutdown of the boiler, which included shutting off all power to the boiler, repowering it and hitting the reset button on the unit's control panel. The control panel allegedly contains limits for the low water cutoff and the feed water makeup system for the boiler.
During the process, the plaintiff realized that the boiler was not malfunctioning because of a pilot assembly issue as originally diagnosed by the defendant, but because of low water conditions.
On Jan. 11, 2021, the boiler was experiencing the same issue, so Deli Star repeated the restart procedure Hennen had instructed. The plaintiff alleges the boiler worked for a short time, but the unit suddenly began malfunctioning again. When Deli Star employees went to check on the boiler, they observed that a fire had broken out at the boiler which eventually caused severe damage to the plaintiff's property.
The plaintiff states that the defendants negligently failed to properly recognize and address the boiler's actual problem and instead gave instructions allowing a dangerously malfunctioning unit to continue to be operated, which ultimately led to the unit causing a massive fire.
The plaintiff is seeking damages in excess of $45 million, plus court costs, interest, attorney fees and any other relief the court deems proper. They are represented in this case by attorney Derek Siegel of Neville, Richard, & Wuller, LLC in Swansea.
St. Clair County Circuit Court case number 22LA1042