After the two kids of Lewis Werner died during a $8000-per-week trip to Hampton, the father who was close to death filed a lawsuit against a travel agency. When a fire broke out on August 3, 2022, killing his daughters Lindsay Elisa Weiner, 19, and Jillian Rose Weiner, 21, Lewis Wiener, a former chair of the US Courts of Federal Claims, accused VRBO, Homeaway.com, and property owners Pamela and Peter Miller of failing to maintain his family’s safety, according to the Daily Mail.
What Happened to Lewis Wiener and His Daughters?
After realizing that his pancreatic illness was terminal, Wiener, 60, decided to take one last family holiday, but tragedy struck. Apart from Wiener, his wife and son were able to escape through a window on the second floor, but Jilian and Lindsay were unable to leave the house. Family members who are grieving have requested $75,000 for emotional suffering as well as an undisclosed sum for economic and medical losses.
The complaint filed in Brooklyn Federal Court claims that the Wiener family is left with “a nightmare from which they cannot awake,” rather than pleasant recollections of a week of vacation on Long Island’s east end. Jillian Rose Wiener and her sister Lindsay Eliza Wiener died as a result of the defendants’ avarice, cost-cutting, and intentional disregard for the safety of the building’s tenants, it said.
According to a report from the fire chief, Wiener’s house lacked any operational smoke or carbon monoxide alarms. The freshly constructed outdoor kitchen wasn’t checked by “a competent electrician or other professional to determine that it fulfilled local, state, and national safety regulations,” the attorneys claimed, adding that the home lacked the required rental licenses.
For their three Spring Lane residences, the Millers received 58 different construction code violation citations.
However, Southampton Town was also criticized by Wiener’s legal team for allegedly encouraging an unlawful rental housing culture there. In the lawsuit, the city was blamed for “creating, through willful indifference, a known hazard of numerous rental properties in the city of Southampton, including the contested home, which the respondent knew or should have known were being rented out without passing the required safety inspections,” according to attorney Andres Alonso.
Alonso claims that Suffolk County is looking into the fire as a possible federal offense.
Owner of HomeAway.com VRBO refuses to comment on pending legal proceedings. A person who violates the city’s rental permit laws may receive a 15-day prison sentence or a fine ranging from $150 to $1,500. The mansion costs $1.8 million to buy, has a rent of roughly $26,000 per month, and is adjacent to Long Beach. The most recent sale of the home was in 2016.
Jilian and Lindsay were dozing off on the second level when the fire broke out. The sisters were unable to flee in time, even though their 23-year-old brother Zachary jumped out of a second-floor window. Jillian, a University of Michigan graduate in earth and environmental sciences, was about to start her final year. Her younger sister Lindsay was a few weeks away from starting her second year at Tulane University in New Orleans.
Mckourage
