Judge ponders where wrongful death lawsuit should be heard

The family of Jeffrey Williams, 11, never returned to Watauga County after he died of carbon monoxide poisoning in a Boone hotel, and their attorney argued Thursday that the state should not make them go back.

“They never want to go back there again,” Bailey King Jr. said during a hearing in Mecklenburg Superior Court. He described efforts by defense attorneys to move a wrongful death lawsuit from Mecklenburg to Watauga County as “litigation tactics and posture.”

Superior Court Judge Bob Bell said he would rule by day’s end Friday.

Jeffrey, whose family lives in Rock Hill, died at the Best Western hotel in Boone in June 2013. Six weeks earlier, Daryl and Shirley Jenkins of Washington State died in the same room.

Both families have filed wrongful death lawsuits, seeking damages from Best Western International, the hotel's owners and its former manager, Damon Mallatere, as well as from companies and individuals who worked on the swimming pool heating system where the deadly gas originated. Mallatere also faces three counts of manslaughter.

In a hearing in October in the Jenkins lawsuit, Judge Carla Archie agreed with defense attorneys that the case should be tried in Watauga, where the deaths occurred and where most witnesses reside.

Defense attorneys made similar arguments Thursday, noting that 32 employees of the Town of Boone are potential witnesses.

Attorney Paul Culpepper, who represents Mallatere, said he was “certainly sympathetic” to the Williams family but argued that the law holds that a trial should be located at the convenience of witnesses.

This story was originally published December 17, 2015 at 4:41 PM with the headline "Judge ponders where wrongful death lawsuit should be heard."