The family of a 5-year-old boy who died in a hyperbaric chamber in Michigan has filed a $100 million lawsuit against the chamber’s manufacturer and the treatment center where it happened.
The boy, Thomas Cooper, was inside a chamber at The Oxford Center in Troy, Michigan, when a fire broke out on Jan. 31.
According to CBS News, lawyers for the family say the fire “was a foreseeable, inevitable, and virtually certain result of Defendants’ callous indifference to human life.”
James Harrington, one of the family’s attorneys, said, “There’s a time period it takes to pressurize and within a short period of time, he becomes engulfed in flames.”
Harrington told PEOPLE that Thomas’s parents brought him to the center for help with sleep apnea and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
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The negligence lawsuit, filed Monday, claims that Sechrist Industries — the company that made the chamber — “manufactured, designed, tested, and placed into the stream of commerce its monochamber with full knowledge that it was, in essence, a coffin waiting to ignite.”
The lawsuit also says Sechrist knew that “the introduction of a single spark, arc, or ignition source in its chamber – pressurized with pure oxygen – would create an inferno from which no patient could possibly escape alive.”
PEOPLE has reached out to Sechrist Industries for comment.
Harrington said the chamber lacked multiple safety features, including fire suppression, automatic fire detection, and an emergency escape system. He also said there were no warnings about fire, explosion, or electrical hazards.
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The suit also names the Oxford Center, its owner Tamela Peterson, and three employees as defendants. According to CBS News, all four have been criminally charged in the boy’s death.
“My fear is that there are others operating in the same way, putting families at risk every single day,” Harrington said. “This was a preventable tragedy, and we hope to bring more awareness about the dangers of these hyperbaric chambers.”
PEOPLE has also reached out to The Oxford Center and Gerald Gleeson II, who represents Peterson in the second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter case, for comment.
