PITTSBURGH - A house fire in Johnstown that claimed the lives of two is blamed on the charger for a prosthetic arm, in a recently filed lawsuit in Pittsburgh state court.
Katey Jeanjaquet-Kohan filed suit April 2 against defendants like Liberating Technologies and College Park Industries. She lost two of her children in a July 2023 fire and hired the firm Saltz Mongeluzzi to pursue her wrongful death claims.
Katey's fiance had lost his right arm in a workplace accident in 2018 and used a prosthetic myoelectric arm known as a Boston Digital Arm. The mechanism ran on a lithium battery that Tyler Skovensky would charge, when needed.
He plugged the arm in to charge the previous evening in the home office and headed to bed. Six people were in the home that night, including Katey's two other children.
"At a time prior to 2:30 a.m., myoelectric arm and/or the component parts, including but not limited to the batteries, caught fire," the suit says.
"The fire spread throughout the house filling the home with flames, smoke and soot. The fire left the family trapped fearing for their lives and the lives of each other."
Two children, Skovensky and their dog escaped through a window but were trapped on the porch roof. Firefighters rescued them with a ladder. But Grant Jeanjaquet, 22 years old, had been sleeping in the living room, next to the office, and was trapped.
Grant died while pinned between the couch and the wall.
Upstairs, Katey and her daughter Vindy Kohan were found by firefighters and taken out through the window and porch roof but Vindy's injuries were too much to overcome. She died on July 29, 2023, from smoke inhalation, at 14 years old.
An online tribute says Grant was a nursing student on the dean's list at Saint Vincent College who planned to join the Navy and become a flight nurse. Vindy was entering her freshman year at Bishop McCort High School who played the piano, guitar and ukulele who hoped to become an engineer.
Scholarships have been established in their names.
“I want people to remember my kids,” Katey said. "They made an impact on lives and I want their memory to stay forever so nobody will forget them. One thing that my son always told me is to pay it forward. He was planning to help another kid at McCort after he graduated from college. He’s the one that put it in my head.”
Other defendants blamed for their deaths are Coapt, Oticon, Ossur Americas, Union Orthotics & Prosthetics and DeLa Torre Orthotics & Prosthetics.
"The defendants knew or should have known that the subject myoelectric arm and/or its component parts including the battery and battery management system were defective, dangerous and unsafe," the suit says.
David Kwass and others at Saltz Mongeluzzi represent the plaintiffs, who also include Katey's daughter Hailey, now 20, and the seven-year-old daughter of Katey and Skovensky.