The law firm that brought the first suit on behalf of a tenant of the Lorraine Apartments building that burned down in December has begun campaigning for a law requiring disclosure of uninspected apartments.
The sponsors are calling the draft law "Taylor's Law" for Robert Taylor, the only person to die in the Dec. 14 and 15 fire.
They have written to Gov. Deval Patrick, asking him to send Taylor's Law to the Legislature.
Attorneys at the Lawrence firm, Crnilovic & Phillips, yesterday said the state needs a law to make it a crime to lease an apartment that is out of code without informing the tenant that the apartment has not been inspected.
On Dec. 31, attorney Ana Crnilovic brought suit against the owners of the Lorraine building on behalf of Shanna Schulze, who lived in the Lorraine before it burned to the ground, killing Taylor and taking down the neighboring Temple Ahavat Achim.
The eight-alarm fire was not fully extinguished for days.
Taylor's remains have not been positively identified, but a memorial service for the well-known and liked longtime resident of the apartment building is to be held tomorrow at 11 a.m. at First Baptist Church, High Street, in Rockport.
Karen Kushin, a one-time Lorraine tenant, told the Times she would circulate a petition at the service to advance the campaign to push the Legislature to pass a law to protect tenants from taking living space that has not been inspected.
The legal foundation of the suit for Schulze is the "warrant of habitability," a principle of cast law that obligates a landlord to keep apartments in good condition.
"The basis of the lawsuit is chiefly that people do not willingly move into a building that is years out of code, as was the Lorraine," Crnilovic and attorney Christopher King told the Times in an e-mail.
"The problem is that while (a statute) may provide criminal punishment for buildings that are out of code," they continued, "the law at present contains no punishment when a landlord fails to disclose such information to potential renters. That's not fair," they added.
"We stress that we are not specifically saying that the out-of-code conditions caused the fatal fire at the Lorraine. That issue may have to be litigated. What we are saying is that when landlords don't inform, the potential to abuse people who don't have a lot of money looms large," Crnilovic and King wrote.
Taylor's Law would make it a crime for a landlord to not inform a potential tenant that the building for which space is offered "is not current with applicable health or inspection code" and hasn't been for 30 days or more.
The Supreme Judicial Court has written that a lease is an implied agreement that the rented unit "complies with the minimum standards prescribed by building and sanitary codes," according to the legal team.
"We're going to generate support through signatures and perhaps newspaper editorials to approach Gloucester, Boston and other city councils and start lobbying," King said in an e-mail. "We think it's a worthwhile endeavor to protect people who are not at arm's length bargaining power landlords."
Tenants interviewed by the Times after the fire said they had not been informed of the uninspected apartments when they signed leases.
A lengthy official investigation into the cause of the fire failed. When the investigation ended, state fire Marshal Stephen Coan said there were several possible causes, but that the intensity of the fire was so great that evidence leading to a starting point and cause was lost.
When it burned to the ground, killing Taylor, 70, the Lorraine was more than three years overdue for a safety inspection and did not have an occupancy permit, according to city building inspector William Sanborn.
City records showed that the owners, Daniel Gattineri and Gary Raso, were contacted by the building inspector's office in December 2004 and directed to make an appointment for an inspection. Sanborn said there is no record that the appointment was made or that the Lorraine, a 98-year-old woodframe building, had been inspected.
Sanborn said records show that the four-story building on Middle Street hadn't been inspected since at least 1998.
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