Thomas Cooper, a 5-year-old preschooler, was burned to death in front of his mother during ADHD treatment while trapped inside a pressurized oxygen chamber. Attorneys have accused the chamber’s manufacturer and operators of “corporate greed.”
A $100 million lawsuit on behalf of James and Juana Cooper, the parents, was filed by Fieger Law. The preschooler was from Royal Oak, Michigan and was declared dead on Jan. 31 at the Oxford Center, a suburban Detroit medical facility in Troy.
The child was strapped into the oxygen chamber, which exploded, killing him in seconds. His mother, who tried to rescue him, was injured.
The defendants are accused of doing “nothing to mitigate this deadly hazard.” The lawsuit further alleges that the company “failed to warn James and Juana that their 5-year-old son, Thomas, would certainly be killed if the chamber caught fire.”
Fieger also claimed that the defendants “chose profits over people, consigning patients to be strapped into a chamber that became a human incinerator the instant a spark ignited”, alleging further that the “conduct was not mere negligence. It was conscious, deliberate, and depraved.”
“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 claims that Thomas’ death was not a “tragic accident. It was a foreseeable, inevitable, and virtually certain result of [the] defendants’ callous indifference to human life.
“Young Thomas Cooper paid the ultimate price for the defendants’ corporate greed.”
Four people were charged in relation to the death in March, including the founder and chief executive of the center, Tamela Peterson. Peterson, 58 years old, was charged with second-degree murder.
Gary Marken, the 65-year-old manager of the facility, and safety manager Gary Mosteller, 64, were charged with second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. The operator of the chamber at the time of the explosion, 60-year-old Aleta Moffitt, was charged with involuntary manslaughter and intentionally placing false medical information on a medical records chart.
They all entered not guilty pleas on March 10 before Troy District Court Magistrate Elizabeth Chiappelli.
Defense attorneys for the accused claimed the tragedy was purely accidental.
“This was a tragic accident and our thoughts and our prayers go out to the family of this little boy. I want to remind everyone that this was an accident, not an intentional act,” Marken’s attorney Raymond Cassar said.
A nurse at the center had said last December that the goals of the 5-year-old’s treament at the center was to address “ADHD symptoms, hyperactivity, sleep and overall health”, as per the legal filings.
According to the Mayo Clinic, increases delivery of oxygen to the body by providing pure oxygen in an enclosed space with higher than normal air pressure. The lawsuit alleged that the center “advertised and sold treatment plans for hyperbaric treatment for over 100 conditions according to their website”, including treatment for “HIV, fetal alcohol syndrome, epilepsy, bladder infections, attention deficit disorder and autism.”
The filings also says that a lengthy list of conditions was mentioned by the Oxford Centre “even though the FDA had only approved treatment for 13 conditions due to the unproven efficacy of treatment for any other condition.”
In August the FDA said it was “aware of reports of serious injuries and deaths with use of hyperbaric oxygen therapy (HBOT) devices.
“Currently, the root cause of these events is not known.”
