Blame For Capitol Fire Is Debated High Court Hears Arguments Between State, Maker Of Trash Can That Burned

An attorney for the state’s insurance companies contends a judge missed the point when he threw out a lawsuit against Rubbermaid Inc. over the New Year’s Day 1992 fire at the Capitol Building.

“This case is not about the source of ignition,” Lewiston lawyer Darrel Aherin told the Idaho Supreme Court on Thursday. “The spread of the fire is the focus of this case.”

But a lawyer for Rubbermaid urged the high court to reject arguments that a plastic wastebasket made by the company was to blame for the blaze that caused $3.4 million in damage.

“This basket did not start this fire,” William Fuhrman said, citing testimony from city and state fire investigators.

The fire began when Jean McNeil, the press secretary for then-Attorney General Larry EchoHawk, dropped cigarette butts from an ashtray into a wastebasket in her office.

An ember was still smoldering in the ashtray at the time, and the fire that resulted spread throughout the attorney general’s second-floor suite of offices and up into the third-floor Legislative Budget Office. Smoke and water damage extended even farther.

The state and the insurance companies that paid for most of the damage sued Rubbermaid, alleging that it was negligent in making a wastebasket that was not fire retardant and that the wastebasket’s material itself added fuel to the fire, causing it to spread.

Fourth District Judge D. Duff McKee granted Rubbermaid’s request for summary judgment. But the state and its insurance companies appealed, arguing that there were factual issues still in dispute.

On Thursday, Aherin showed the Supreme Court a videotape of tests comparing the fire resistance of a metal wastebasket sold for commercial use with the kind of plastic wastebasket involved in the Statehouse blaze.

“It has clearly become the fuel of the fire,” Aherin said. “It becomes the source of the fuel’s spread.”

He said industry standards call for wastebaskets sold for commercial use to be able to contain a fire and not contribute to its spread. But McKee chose to accept the testimony of state and city fire investigators who determined the wastebasket was not responsible, Aherin said, despite the videotaped tests and an expert’s opinion that the wastebasket was at fault.

But Fuhrman argued that McNeil’s cramped office was filled with paper and other material that contributed to the fire, so the wastebasket should not be singled out for blame.

Rubbermaid has made a fire-resistant line of wastebaskets since the early 1970s, Fuhrman said, and the state could have bought one if it wanted.

“The state made a choice based on the cost,” he said.

“If the state knew it was buying a wastebasket that wasn’t fire resistant, how could it hold the manufacturer liable?” Justice Byron Johnson asked Aherin.

“They didn’t know that,” he replied. “That’s what I’m trying to get at.”

In fact, he said, the state assumed its was fire resistant based on industry standards.