Mark Torrey probably set his Coleman propane camping heater on low to get the chill out of the air after a weekend of hunting with his son.
Then, sometime during the night of Sept. 23, 2006, Torrey and his 26-year-old son, Christopher, died from carbon-monoxide poisoning in a one-room cabin.
Gale Torrey, of Lakewood, knew something was wrong when she had not heard back from her husband and son by Sunday afternoon. She asked the owner of the cabin near Central City to check on her family.
Mark Torrey, 51, was found dead, resting on a kitchen chair, the Coleman Focus 15 heater in front of him.
Christopher Torrey had fallen from a standing position, hit his head and died.
“It was totally devastating,” Gale Torrey said. “It feels like my whole life was gone in an instant.”
Last year, Gale Torrey became one of many across the country who have filed product-liability and wrongful-death lawsuits against Coleman, the camping-equipment company that manufactured the Focus 15 heater.
Although Coleman does not make the Focus 15 model anymore, the heaters are available on eBay or at garage sales.
Torrey also fears that someone who already owns a Focus 15 heater could die because Coleman has not ordered a recall of the product, and she believes the warning on the heater is insufficient because it doesn’t say the heater could cause death from carbon-monoxide poisoning.
In January, Torrey and her daughter, Sheena Torrey, went to the Sportsmen’s Expo in Denver and held up a sign warning campers about the heaters.
“Just destroy them,” she said. “Don’t sell them to somebody else. Use a safe one that has an oxygen depletion sensor.”
Attorneys rebut lawsuit
Ann Walden, a spokeswoman for Coleman, said she could not comment about the case or the heaters because of Torrey’s pending lawsuit.
But in court papers filed in U.S. District Court in Denver, Coleman attorneys argue that the Torreys did not use the heater properly and could have died from other heat sources — such as a wood-burning stove — in the cabin.
They also argued that the warnings on the heater were adequate. The warning says: “FOR OUTDOOR USE ONLY. Never use inside house, camper, tent, vehicle or other unventilated or enclosed areas.”
“Plaintiffs have failed to come forward with any material evidence to establish that the subject heater could have or did deplete the oxygen in the cabin and produce the lethal levels of CO that resulted in the Torreys’ deaths,” the motion says. “Furthermore, even if Plaintiffs had such evidence, they have not come forward with any evidence showing that any viable alternative design was technologically or economically feasible at the time the heater was manufactured over 16 years ago.
“Finally, Plaintiffs cannot meet their burden to establish that an alternative warning would have prevented the incident.”
Last month, Coleman attorneys asked Judge Richard Matsch to toss out the lawsuit. Matsch denied the motion and set pretrial hearings for September.
Coleman verdicts mixed
Since 1990, 90 people have died from carbon-monoxide poisoning while using different models of Coleman propane heaters, said Mark Stageberg, an attorney for the Torrey family who specializes in carbon-monoxide lawsuits.
Stageberg has won two federal cases and lost one against Coleman.
In 1999, an Oregon jury found that a Coleman heater was defective and caused the death of a 39-year-old construction worker who had used the heater in his tent. The man’s family was awarded $967,000.
A second case in Utah, involving the Focus 15 heater, was rejected by a jury who determined that two 29-year-old campers who died were more at fault than Coleman.
In 2005, a Miami jury awarded a woman who lost her husband and 16-year-old son who were camping with a Coleman heater $8 million even though the jury felt the campers were 25 percent at fault for their own deaths.
“The warnings say these heaters are for outdoor use and do not take within an enclosed, unventilated space, but there is no mention of the carbon-monoxide hazard,” Stageberg said.
“Mark and Christopher Torrey were very experienced campers . . . and most of the deaths are not from dumb, stupid people; they are experienced people who do not realize the danger.”
Stageberg says Coleman conducted its own study that showed that out of 1,000 consumers, 28 percent would feel safe with the heater in a tent and 38 percent would feel safe taking it inside a camper.
On Monday, Stageberg begins trying another federal lawsuit in Tacoma, Wash., involving the deaths of Mari Daniel’s father and husband who died from carbon-monoxide poisoning while using a Coleman PowerMate heater in their camper on Sept. 16, 2006.
Warnings issued in 2002
The federal Consumer Product Safety Commission began issuing warnings to consumers about the propane heaters in 2002 and developed a voluntary safety standard that urged companies to place oxygen depletion sensors on the heaters that automatically shut off the heat when levels of oxygen fall.
“I can tell you that we are not aware of any deaths of people where there was an oxygen-depletion sensor on the unit, so we know they work,” said CPSC spokeswoman Patty Davis.
Even though the safety standards have been in place for six years, deaths and injuries continue to happen with the older heaters. The CPSC has urged the public to buy newer heaters.
But the older heaters have never been recalled.
“CPSC have become advocates of these new camping heaters,” Davis said. “Using older camping heaters can increase the risk of carbon-monoxide poisoning.”
Christopher Torrey left behind a wife, Whitney Torrey, and their son, Joshua, who was 2 years old at the time.
“You never recover from something like this, and you don’t think it can happen to you,” Gale Torrey said. “I really hope we can save some other families from going through this.”
Felisa Cardona: 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com
