The Boiler in a Chefornak Home Started Whistling. When He Went to Look, It Exploded. The Housing Authority That Promised to Inspect It Said Its Contract Had Expired Years Earlier, and Lost.
After trial: Reduced by statute and then affirmed. The Bethel jury's $3,427,000 verdict (September 2019) was cut to $2,847,000 when the superior court applied the AS 09.17.010 cap to Dietrich Mael's noneconomic damages, reducing $1,580,000 to the $1,000,000 severe-permanent-impairment ceiling; the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed on April 15, 2022 (Nos. S-17802/S-17821, 507 P.3d 963), holding the family's $175,000 in emotional-distress awards were not subject to that same single cap. The figure ranked here is the $2,847,000 in damages. KYUK reported the total the authority was ordered to pay, with prejudgment interest, costs and fees, as more than $3.5 million; that larger number is not damages and is not ranked. Verdict reporters carry this case as $2,672,000, which is Dietrich Mael's post-cap share alone and omits the family's awards. Collectability: the payer is a regional housing authority; no source reports the payment, so the disclosure stays at not public.
Won by Angstman Law Office, Inc..
In January 2016 Dietrich Mael heard the boiler in his family's Chefornak home whistling and went to check it. It exploded, threw him against a wall, sprayed him with scalding water and glycol and knocked him out. The home's owner, the AVCP Regional Housing Authority, had promised in the family's lease-purchase contract to inspect the boiler and had not; the pressure relief valve was rusted through. A Bethel jury put all the fault on the authority and awarded $3,427,000. Alaska's cap cut the noneconomic portion to $1,000,000, and the Alaska Supreme Court affirmed $2,847,000 in 2022.
What happened
Thomas and Rose Mael had lived in their Chefornak home for 25 years under a lease-purchase contract with the Association of Village Council Presidents Regional Housing Authority. The contract included a promise that the authority would inspect the boiler.
In January 2016 Rose Mael heard the boiler whistling and asked her adult son Dietrich to check it. As he approached, it exploded. He was thrown against a wall, sprayed with scalding water and glycol, and knocked unconscious. He spent about a week in hospital, then months of physical therapy. The back pain that remained ended his employment and the subsistence hunting and fishing that fed his family. The pressure relief valve on the boiler was rusted and corroded.
The housing authority's defense was that its inspection contract had expired in 2009. The courts did not accept it: the authority had never conveyed title to the family and was still collecting a monthly administrative fee from them, so its duty to inspect with reasonable care had never ended.
The case was tried to a jury in Bethel beginning in September 2019. The jury found the authority 100 percent at fault and awarded Dietrich Mael $1,672,000 in economic damages and $1,580,000 in noneconomic damages, plus $175,000 to his parents and his two minor children for negligent infliction of emotional distress, a total of $3,427,000. The children are identified in the case only by initials and are not named here.
Then the cap. AS 09.17.010 limits noneconomic damages, and for a severe permanent physical impairment the ceiling is the greater of $1,000,000 or $25,000 times the injured person's life expectancy. The superior court cut Dietrich's $1,580,000 to $1,000,000. The authority appealed on liability and argued that the family members' emotional-distress awards had to be squeezed under the same single cap; the family cross-appealed. On April 15, 2022 the Alaska Supreme Court, in Nos. S-17802 and S-17821, affirmed on both counts: the duty to inspect survived the contract's technical expiration, and each family member's emotional-distress injury was distinct enough to carry its own cap. That left $2,847,000 in damages. With prejudgment interest, costs and attorney's fees the amount the authority was ordered to pay came to more than $3.5 million.
Susan Orlansky of Reeves Amodio, Russell L. Winner of Winner & Associates and Myron Angstman of Angstman Law Office in Bethel represented the Maels. Aaron D. Sperbeck and Shane C. Coffey of Birch Horton Bittner & Cherot, with Thomas Weathers, represented the authority.
Sources
This account is drawn from contemporaneous public reporting and the court record.
- 1.Alaska Supreme Court, AVCP Regional Housing Authority v. Mael, Nos. S-17802/S-17821, April 15, 2022: the boiler explosion in the Chefornak home; the jury's $1,672,000 economic and $1,580,000 noneconomic awards to Dietrich Mael and $175,000 to his family; the reduction to $1,000,000 under AS 09.17.010; the holdings on the authority's continuing duty to inspect and on the family members' separate caps; and the counsel listing naming Susan Orlansky of Reeves Amodio, Russell L. Winner of Winner & Associates and Myron Angstman of Angstman Law Office for the Mael family
- 2.KYUK, 22 April 2022: the family's 25 years in the home, the whistling boiler and the explosion, the authority's expired-contract defense and the court's answer on title and administrative fees, and the corrected total of more than $3.5 million once interest, costs and fees were added
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