Carbon Monoxide Poisoning Suit Revived Against Housing Authority

The housing authority in Columbia, S.C., must face a federal lawsuit by the daughter of a man killed by carbon monoxide poisoning stemming from the 30-year-old furnace in his city-owned apartment.

Danielle Washington alleged facts that “shock the conscience: a public housing authority’s deliberate indifference to a risk of harm that threatened numerous families living in low-income housing,” the US Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit said Thursday. It revived her civil rights lawsuit, saying she’d adequately pleaded that the housing authority recognized the risk posed by carbon monoxide poisoning and acted inappropriately in light of that risk.

The ...