PORTLAND, Maine — The landlord who owned the 20-24 Noyes St. building where a November fire claimed the lives of six people is now evicting tenants of another residence who complained about his upkeep.
Gregory Nisbet issued eviction notices to the tenants at 188 Dartmouth St., who last month told city inspectors and news reporters he wasn’t keeping his building safe to live in, Portland television station WGME CBS 13 reported Thursday.
Nisbet also faces similar allegations in a new wrongful death lawsuit pursued by one of the victims of the Noyes Street fire, Maine’s deadliest blaze in four decades.
The Portland Press Herald reported that the parents of 29-year-old fire victim Ashley Thomas — Nikki and Louis Thomas Jr. of Gilford, New Hampshire — filed a lawsuit seeking $2 million in damages, arguing Nisbet was negligent in part because of tenant claims there were no working fire alarms and an exit was left blocked.
The Thomas lawsuit is the second such legal challenge filed against Nisbet, who was sued in late November by the family of 29-year-old victim Steven Summers.
In addition to Summers and Thomas, the morning blaze on Nov. 1 claimed the lives of tenants David Bragdon Jr., 27, and Nicole Finlay, 26, as well as visitors Christopher Conlee, 25, and Maelisha Jackson, 26.
The house reportedly had been the site of a Halloween party the previous night. Seven others who were in the residence at the time escaped.
In December, a group of residents in another of Nisbet’s properties, at 188 Dartmouth St., called attention to what they described as unsafe conditions in that building, telling reporters they “don’t want to end up like” the tenants of his Noyes Street property.
In response to those complaints, city inspectors visited the Dartmouth Street home and found a series of code violations, including an inadequate fire alarm system, a lack of a sprinkler over the boiler and illegal locks on exit doors, CBS 13 reported.
Now, in accordance with a deal reached between Nisbet’s attorney and the tenants, the tenants must be out of the Dartmouth Street building by Feb. 15, CBS 13 reported.
“He’s mad that we went to the [government] and told them,” Roxann White, one of the Dartmouth Street tenants, told the television station. “He texted me when the Noyes Street fire first happened and asked me not to talk to anyone from the news.”
The tenants and landlord offered conflicting opinions about who was at fault for the code violations. The eviction notice given to the tenants last month accuses them of changing locks without permission, not filling the furnace with oil and causing police disturbances, CBS 13 reported.
“Because [the issues] were tenant created, we sought to evict the tenants and prevent any further issues,” David Chamberlain, an attorney representing Nisbet on the Dartmouth Street case, told the television station. “[V]iolations include them putting locks on individual bedrooms. [The landlord] doesn’t have control of that and it’s something he’s not authorizing.”
White disagreed.
“When I moved in, the house was destroyed,” she told CBS 13. “There were holes in the walls, no fire alarms except for the one in my room.”
Chamberlain said he and his client were “very confident” they would have won if the Dartmouth Street tenants challenged the eviction in court.
White said she the other tenants agreed to the Feb. 15 move-out deadline — as opposed to fighting the eviction legally — because a court case could have left them nowhere to live on even shorter notice.
“If you don’t have a place to go in the dead of winter, it’s very sad,” she told CBS 13. “A lot of [my roommates] don’t have anyplace to go at all.”
In response to the Noyes Street fire, the city of Portland assembled a task force to review city fire and codes inspection policies and procedures. That panel, which is being led in part by Boston Deputy Fire Chief Joseph Fleming, is due to make its recommendations to the City Council in February.
