This grieving dad is out for justice.
The Manhattan man whose three young daughters were killed in the horrific Christmas Day house fire in Connecticut has taken the first legal steps to sue over the deadly blaze, The Post has learned.
Matthew Badger filed papers in Stamford Probate Court recently, seeking to administer his daughters’ estates for a potential “wrongful-death claim.”
Badger’s lawyer Richard Emery yesterday was quick to say his client “has no intention of suing his ex-wife,” Madonna Badger — the Manhattan ad exec who, along with her boyfriend, survived the predawn fire that took the lives of her and Matthew’s daughters, Lily, 9, and 7-year-old twins Sarah and Grace.
Madonna’s parents, Lomer and Pauline Johnson, also perished.
But Emery leveled criticism at the boyfriend, Michael Borcina, who was the contractor leading renovations on Madonna Badger’s $1.7 million Stamford home, which had no working smoke detectors.
Borcina put still-smoldering ashes from the fireplace into an attached trash enclosure that officials say sparked the deadly inferno.
“That fact is that Borcina was the contractor on the job. He was aware of the dangers, or should have been aware of dangers, that a civilian would have been unaware of,” Emery told The Post, while emphasizing that no decision on whether to sue anyone has been made. “The fact that kids were living in this house was unbelievable . . . I don’t hold Madonna Badger responsible for that at all because I can’t imagine she would have understood the immediacy of the dangers.”
A Stamford police probe is ongoing into whether manslaughter or other charges should be lodged against Borcina and Madonna Badger, both of whom have been interviewed by cops.
After the fire, probers learned that the house had no certificate of occupancy, the smoke-detector system was not hooked up, and the last city inspection of the construction site was early last summer.
Emery was equally scathing in his criticism of the decision by the Stamford Buildings Department to have the still-smoldering house knocked down the day after the fire as a public-safety hazard.
He called the knock-down order “outrageous” and said “it raises all kinds of very serious suspicions that the house was destroyed . . . before anybody with expertise outside the city of Stamford was called in, [such as] insurance experts, State Police experts.”
Exactly one month after the fire, Matthew Badger filed legal papers asking the Stamford Probate Court to appoint him the administrator of his girls’ estates.
As their heirs and next of kin, both Matthew and Madonna Badger would be in line to inherit any proceeds.
Emery said that Matthew Badger is starting a foundation in his daughters’ memory that would fund school arts programs, adding that the proceeds of any wrongful-death suit might fund that foundation’s work.
Madonna Badger’s lawyer, Stan Twardy Jr., and Borcina’s attorney, Eugene Riccio, both said they hadn’t see the probate-court filing and had no comment.
Father of Stamford Fire Victims Eyes Possible Lawsuit: MyFoxNY.com
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