Pennsylvania
4 injured in nursing home explosion file negligence lawsuit
Four people hurt when an explosion ripped through a Pennsylvania nursing home two weeks ago sued the facility and a natural gas utility on Monday, claiming their negligence was to blame.
Two workers at Bristol Health & Rehab Center LLC, a resident of the suburban Philadelphia facility and a contractor who happened to be there when the blast occurred on Dec. 23 filed the lawsuit. The defendants include PECO Energy Company, which provided natural gas to the complex, its parent company Exelon Corp., and Saber Healthcare Holdings LLC of Beachwood, Ohio.
The lawsuit filed in Philadelphia court claims the defendants “were aware of a gas leak in the building and failed to take the steps necessary to evacuate the building, fix the leak and protect the residents, workers and others that were exposed to the horrific blast.”
Zach Shamberg, Saber Healthcare Group chief of government affairs, said in an email Monday that the company is cooperating with the ongoing investigation and does not comment on litigation.
PECO communications director Greg Smore said in an email that as a party to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the company was not permitted to comment. The gas utility has previously said the cause is under investigation and it’s not known whether PECO’s equipment or natural gas were involved.
The explosion killed a resident and a worker and injured 20 other people. Officials have not said what caused it, but a PECO crew had been there to investigate a reported gas leak.
The lawsuit claims the gas leak “had been festering for days” and the gas odor came from the boiler room.
“Defendants’ decision not to immediately initiate evacuation procedures under these circumstances was reckless and outrageous given the population within the building, with many of the residents having limited mobility and unable to self-evacuate in the case of an emergency,” the lawsuit alleged.
A utility crew was responding to reports of a gas odor when the explosion happened, authorities have said.
Authorities reported acts of heroism in response to the explosion. About 100 residents were taken to other nursing homes nearby, officials said.
One of the people who died was Muthoni Nduthu, 52, a Kenyan immigrant who worked there. The other victim was a resident whose name has not been made public.
The force of the blast shook nearby houses for blocks in Bristol, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia.
Alaska
Pilot who safely landed plane after panel blew out sues Boeing
The Alaska Airlines pilot who has been universally praised as a hero for safely landing a jet after a door plug panel flew off shortly after takeoff is suing Boeing because he believes the plane maker wrongly tried to blame him and the rest of the crew in past legal filings.
Captain Brandon Fisher was commended by the heads of the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration and even Boeing executives for helping ensure none of the 177 people aboard flight 1282 were killed when the blowout happened in January 2024.
But Fisher’s lawyers say that Boeing’s attempts to deflect liability in past lawsuits despite what the NTSB investigation found led to the pilot being sued by some passengers and caused him great distress.
“Boeing’s lie infuriated Captain Fisher as well, as he was being castigated for his actions as opposed to being lauded,” Fisher’s lawyers, William Walsh and Richard Mummalo, wrote in the lawsuit filed in an Oregon court. “Because he had flown Boeing aircraft for the entirety of his employment with Alaska Airlines, Boeing’s attempts to blame him felt like a deep, personal betrayal by a company that claimed to hold pilots in the highest regard.”
Four flight attendants previously sued Boeing over the incident last summer.
The NTSB investigation of the blowout found that four bolts securing what is known as the door plug panel were removed and never replaced during a repair as the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft was being assembled. Boeing and key supplier Spirit Aerosystems, which has since been acquired by Boeing, were both implicated.
The blowout occurred minutes after the flight took off from Portland, Oregon, and created a roaring air vacuum. Seven passengers and one flight attendant sustained minor injuries, but the plane was able to land safely.
The 2-foot-by-4-foot (61-centimeter-by-122-centimeter) piece of fuselage covering an unused emergency exit behind the left wing had blown out. Only seven seats on the flight were unoccupied, including the two seats closest to the opening.
Boeing factory workers told NTSB investigators they felt pressured to work too fast and were asked to perform jobs they weren’t qualified for.
Fisher’s lawsuit describes how he and the first officer acted quickly after losing cabin pressure when the panel blew out to fly the plane safely back to Portland while decreasing altitude and working with air traffic controllers to avoid any other planes in the area.
The head of the commercial airplane unit at Boeing, Stan Deal, commended the Alaska Airlines crew for safely landing the plane in a memo to employees after the incident.
Boeing did not comment directly on this new lawsuit. But the company’s CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has made improving safety a top priority ever since he took over the top job at Boeing in August 2024.
The FAA fined Boeing $3.1 million over safety violations inspectors found after the door plug incident. But in October the agency allowed Boeing to increase production of the 737 Max to 42 planes a month because its inspectors were satisfied with the measures the company has taken to improve safety.
Alaska Airlines also declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the airline remains “grateful to our crew members for the bravery and quick-thinking that they displayed on Flight 1282 in ensuring the safety of all on board.”
Wyoming
Abortion stays legal as top court strikes down laws, including first pill ban in the U.S.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.
The justices sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Wyoming is one of the most conservative states, but the 4-1 ruling from justices all appointed by Republican governors was unsurprising in that it upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn’t written to apply to abortion but said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
“But lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote.
The ruling upholds abortion as “essential health care” that shouldn’t be subject to government interference, Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement.
“Our clinic will remain open and ready to provide compassionate reproductive health care, including abortions, and our patients in Wyoming will be able to obtain this care without having to travel out of state,” Burkhart said.
The clinic opened in 2023 as the only facility of its kind in the state, almost a year later than planned after an arson attack. A woman who admitted breaking in and causing heavy damage by lighting gasoline that she poured over the clinic floors pleaded guilty and has been serving a five-year prison sentence.
Attorneys for the state had argued before the state Supreme Court that abortion can’t violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not health care.
Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement that the court ruling disappointed him. He called on state lawmakers meeting later this winter to pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go before voters this fall.
“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said.
Such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced as a nonbudget matter in the monthlong legislative session that will be devoted primarily to the state budget. But it would have wide support in the Republican-dominated statehouse.
One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly prohibiting abortion.
Abortion has remained legal in the state since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them went ahead. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.
Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to get ultrasounds before having medication abortions. A judge in a separate lawsuit has blocked those laws from taking effect while that case proceeds.
Thirteen states currently ban abortion completely after the North Dakota Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling and upheld that state’s abortion ban in November.
Pennsylvania
Prosecutor in Jerry Sandusky and John du Pont cases dies at 76
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Joseph E. McGettigan III, a Pennsylvania prosecutor who obtained criminal convictions against Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and chemical heir John du Pont, has died at age 76.
McGettigan, who lived in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, died on Dec. 31, according to the funeral home Boyd Horrox Givnish Life Celebration Home of East Norriton.
He was a senior deputy attorney general when he served as a lead prosecutor in the trial of Sandusky on child molestation charges in 2012. During the closing argument, McGettigan showed jurors photos of eight of Sandusky’s victims as children, all of whom had taken the stand.
“He molested and abused and hurt these children horribly,” McGettigan said. “He knows he did it, and you know he did it. Find him guilty of everything.” Sandusky was convicted of 45 of 48 counts.
McGettigan was an assistant district attorney in Delaware County when he prosecuted du Pont, who was found guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill in the death of Olympic gold medal-winning freestyle wrestler David Schultz at du Pont’s palatial estate outside Philadelphia in 1996. Schultz come to live and train at a state-of-the-art training center that du Pont had built on his property.
Du Pont died in a Pennsylvania prison in 2010 at the age of 72. Sandusky, 81, is currently serving a 30- to 60-year sentence in state prison.
McGettigan’s work as prosecutor, which also included a stint in Philadelphia, often involved murder and child molestation cases. More recently he had been a lawyer in private practice, including work on behalf of crime victims.
Survivors include his wife, Gay Warren; his mother, Ruth L. McGettigan; and six siblings.
4 injured in nursing home explosion file negligence lawsuit
Four people hurt when an explosion ripped through a Pennsylvania nursing home two weeks ago sued the facility and a natural gas utility on Monday, claiming their negligence was to blame.
Two workers at Bristol Health & Rehab Center LLC, a resident of the suburban Philadelphia facility and a contractor who happened to be there when the blast occurred on Dec. 23 filed the lawsuit. The defendants include PECO Energy Company, which provided natural gas to the complex, its parent company Exelon Corp., and Saber Healthcare Holdings LLC of Beachwood, Ohio.
The lawsuit filed in Philadelphia court claims the defendants “were aware of a gas leak in the building and failed to take the steps necessary to evacuate the building, fix the leak and protect the residents, workers and others that were exposed to the horrific blast.”
Zach Shamberg, Saber Healthcare Group chief of government affairs, said in an email Monday that the company is cooperating with the ongoing investigation and does not comment on litigation.
PECO communications director Greg Smore said in an email that as a party to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the company was not permitted to comment. The gas utility has previously said the cause is under investigation and it’s not known whether PECO’s equipment or natural gas were involved.
The explosion killed a resident and a worker and injured 20 other people. Officials have not said what caused it, but a PECO crew had been there to investigate a reported gas leak.
The lawsuit claims the gas leak “had been festering for days” and the gas odor came from the boiler room.
“Defendants’ decision not to immediately initiate evacuation procedures under these circumstances was reckless and outrageous given the population within the building, with many of the residents having limited mobility and unable to self-evacuate in the case of an emergency,” the lawsuit alleged.
A utility crew was responding to reports of a gas odor when the explosion happened, authorities have said.
Authorities reported acts of heroism in response to the explosion. About 100 residents were taken to other nursing homes nearby, officials said.
One of the people who died was Muthoni Nduthu, 52, a Kenyan immigrant who worked there. The other victim was a resident whose name has not been made public.
The force of the blast shook nearby houses for blocks in Bristol, about 20 miles (32 kilometers) northeast of Philadelphia.
Alaska
Pilot who safely landed plane after panel blew out sues Boeing
The Alaska Airlines pilot who has been universally praised as a hero for safely landing a jet after a door plug panel flew off shortly after takeoff is suing Boeing because he believes the plane maker wrongly tried to blame him and the rest of the crew in past legal filings.
Captain Brandon Fisher was commended by the heads of the National Transportation Safety Board and the Federal Aviation Administration and even Boeing executives for helping ensure none of the 177 people aboard flight 1282 were killed when the blowout happened in January 2024.
But Fisher’s lawyers say that Boeing’s attempts to deflect liability in past lawsuits despite what the NTSB investigation found led to the pilot being sued by some passengers and caused him great distress.
“Boeing’s lie infuriated Captain Fisher as well, as he was being castigated for his actions as opposed to being lauded,” Fisher’s lawyers, William Walsh and Richard Mummalo, wrote in the lawsuit filed in an Oregon court. “Because he had flown Boeing aircraft for the entirety of his employment with Alaska Airlines, Boeing’s attempts to blame him felt like a deep, personal betrayal by a company that claimed to hold pilots in the highest regard.”
Four flight attendants previously sued Boeing over the incident last summer.
The NTSB investigation of the blowout found that four bolts securing what is known as the door plug panel were removed and never replaced during a repair as the Boeing 737 Max 9 aircraft was being assembled. Boeing and key supplier Spirit Aerosystems, which has since been acquired by Boeing, were both implicated.
The blowout occurred minutes after the flight took off from Portland, Oregon, and created a roaring air vacuum. Seven passengers and one flight attendant sustained minor injuries, but the plane was able to land safely.
The 2-foot-by-4-foot (61-centimeter-by-122-centimeter) piece of fuselage covering an unused emergency exit behind the left wing had blown out. Only seven seats on the flight were unoccupied, including the two seats closest to the opening.
Boeing factory workers told NTSB investigators they felt pressured to work too fast and were asked to perform jobs they weren’t qualified for.
Fisher’s lawsuit describes how he and the first officer acted quickly after losing cabin pressure when the panel blew out to fly the plane safely back to Portland while decreasing altitude and working with air traffic controllers to avoid any other planes in the area.
The head of the commercial airplane unit at Boeing, Stan Deal, commended the Alaska Airlines crew for safely landing the plane in a memo to employees after the incident.
Boeing did not comment directly on this new lawsuit. But the company’s CEO, Kelly Ortberg, has made improving safety a top priority ever since he took over the top job at Boeing in August 2024.
The FAA fined Boeing $3.1 million over safety violations inspectors found after the door plug incident. But in October the agency allowed Boeing to increase production of the 737 Max to 42 planes a month because its inspectors were satisfied with the measures the company has taken to improve safety.
Alaska Airlines also declined to comment on the lawsuit, but said the airline remains “grateful to our crew members for the bravery and quick-thinking that they displayed on Flight 1282 in ensuring the safety of all on board.”
Wyoming
Abortion stays legal as top court strikes down laws, including first pill ban in the U.S.
FORT COLLINS, Colo. (AP) — Abortion will remain legal in Wyoming after the state Supreme Court ruled Tuesday that two laws barring the procedure, including the country’s first explicit ban on abortion pills, violate the state constitution.
The justices sided with the state’s only abortion clinic and others who had sued over the abortion bans passed since 2022, when the U.S. Supreme Court overturned the landmark Roe v. Wade decision.
Wyoming is one of the most conservative states, but the 4-1 ruling from justices all appointed by Republican governors was unsurprising in that it upheld every previous lower court ruling that the abortion bans violated the state constitution.
Wellspring Health Access in Casper, the abortion access advocacy group Chelsea’s Fund and four women, including two obstetricians, argued that the laws violated a state constitutional amendment ensuring competent adults have the right to make their own health care decisions.
Voters approved the constitutional amendment in 2012 in response to the federal Affordable Care Act. The justices recognized that the amendment wasn’t written to apply to abortion but said it’s not their job to “add words” to the state constitution.
“But lawmakers could ask Wyoming voters to consider a constitutional amendment that would more clearly address this issue,” the justices wrote.
The ruling upholds abortion as “essential health care” that shouldn’t be subject to government interference, Wellspring Health Access President Julie Burkhart said in a statement.
“Our clinic will remain open and ready to provide compassionate reproductive health care, including abortions, and our patients in Wyoming will be able to obtain this care without having to travel out of state,” Burkhart said.
The clinic opened in 2023 as the only facility of its kind in the state, almost a year later than planned after an arson attack. A woman who admitted breaking in and causing heavy damage by lighting gasoline that she poured over the clinic floors pleaded guilty and has been serving a five-year prison sentence.
Attorneys for the state had argued before the state Supreme Court that abortion can’t violate the Wyoming constitution because it is not health care.
Gov. Mark Gordon, a Republican, said in a statement that the court ruling disappointed him. He called on state lawmakers meeting later this winter to pass a constitutional amendment banning abortion that would go before voters this fall.
“This ruling may settle, for now, a legal question, but it does not settle the moral one, nor does it reflect where many Wyoming citizens stand, including myself. It is time for this issue to go before the people for a vote,” Gordon said.
Such an amendment would require a two-thirds vote to be introduced as a nonbudget matter in the monthlong legislative session that will be devoted primarily to the state budget. But it would have wide support in the Republican-dominated statehouse.
One of the laws overturned Tuesday sought to ban abortion except to protect a pregnant woman’s life or in cases involving rape or incest. The other law would have made Wyoming the only state to explicitly ban abortion pills, though other states have instituted de facto bans on abortion medication by broadly prohibiting abortion.
Abortion has remained legal in the state since Teton County District Judge Melissa Owens in Jackson blocked the bans while the lawsuit challenging them went ahead. Owens struck down the laws as unconstitutional in 2024.
Last year, Wyoming passed additional laws requiring abortion clinics to be licensed surgical centers and women to get ultrasounds before having medication abortions. A judge in a separate lawsuit has blocked those laws from taking effect while that case proceeds.
Thirteen states currently ban abortion completely after the North Dakota Supreme Court overturned an earlier ruling and upheld that state’s abortion ban in November.
Pennsylvania
Prosecutor in Jerry Sandusky and John du Pont cases dies at 76
HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Joseph E. McGettigan III, a Pennsylvania prosecutor who obtained criminal convictions against Penn State assistant football coach Jerry Sandusky and chemical heir John du Pont, has died at age 76.
McGettigan, who lived in the Philadelphia suburb of Media, died on Dec. 31, according to the funeral home Boyd Horrox Givnish Life Celebration Home of East Norriton.
He was a senior deputy attorney general when he served as a lead prosecutor in the trial of Sandusky on child molestation charges in 2012. During the closing argument, McGettigan showed jurors photos of eight of Sandusky’s victims as children, all of whom had taken the stand.
“He molested and abused and hurt these children horribly,” McGettigan said. “He knows he did it, and you know he did it. Find him guilty of everything.” Sandusky was convicted of 45 of 48 counts.
McGettigan was an assistant district attorney in Delaware County when he prosecuted du Pont, who was found guilty of third-degree murder but mentally ill in the death of Olympic gold medal-winning freestyle wrestler David Schultz at du Pont’s palatial estate outside Philadelphia in 1996. Schultz come to live and train at a state-of-the-art training center that du Pont had built on his property.
Du Pont died in a Pennsylvania prison in 2010 at the age of 72. Sandusky, 81, is currently serving a 30- to 60-year sentence in state prison.
McGettigan’s work as prosecutor, which also included a stint in Philadelphia, often involved murder and child molestation cases. More recently he had been a lawyer in private practice, including work on behalf of crime victims.
Survivors include his wife, Gay Warren; his mother, Ruth L. McGettigan; and six siblings.
