LOS ANGELES (Legal Newsline) – Property owners aren’t at fault for the nightmarish death of a man who was burned alive at work in 2016.
California’s Second Appellate District on Aug. 7 ruled for Teachers Insurance and Annuity Association of America, which owned a property leased by a beauty products company.
In 2016, Ji Hoon Koh was pouring 55 gallons of a product sold as MOA Oil into smaller containers when the drum exploded, engulfing Koh and the property in fire. As it turned out, the oil was highly flammable and volatile – a fact unknown to the owner of Koh’s employer, I.B.S. Beauty.
Koh’s parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit against TIAA and the companies that managed the property, Cushman & Wakefield and JRT Realty Group. They claimed the companies had a duty to make sure the property was safe and should have discovered the oil was hazardous.
Three drums of the oil that did not contain hazardous-material warnings were kept in a fenced area at the industrial complex.
“Plaintiffs assert defendants violated Fire Code provisions that require an operational permit ‘[t]o store, handle or use Class I liquids,’ and ‘to store, transport on site, dispense, use or handle hazardous materials,’ in excess of certain amounts,” Justice Elizabeth Grimes wrote.
“As is apparent from our fact recitation, there is no evidence defendants did any of those things. Nor is there any evidence that defendants knew IBS was storing and using hazardous materials. The evidence is undisputed that before the fire, even (IBS owner Daniel Kim) did not know that he had brought hazardous materials on the premises, so he could not have conveyed that information to defendants.”