Fatal Garden City Beach fire leads to lawsuit against golf cart maker

The family of a Timmonsville couple who died in a Garden City Beach house fire in 2014 blames a defective golf cart for causing the disaster and is suing the cart’s manufacturer and one of its parts suppliers, according to court records.

The 71-page case was filed in federal court Feb. 25 against the cart maker, Club Car, LLC, of Evans, Georgia, and Curtis Instruments, Inc., a Mount Kisco, New York-based producer of motor controllers and other instruments for electric vehicles.

The plaintiffs include relatives of Joel and Melissa Lamb, representatives for their children who survived the fire and the parents of two other children who were staying with the family at the beach house.

“Obviously we’re just beginning our investigation, but we remain concerned based on the tragic deaths,” said Kevin Dean, a Mount Pleasant attorney representing the plaintiffs. “There is a serious electrical problem with certain [types] of these golf carts.”

Dean said he couldn’t comment on whether any outside agency was investigating the carts.

The official investigation of the fire took about nine months to complete, said Brian Hollifield, a fire investigator with the Murrells Inlet-Garden City Fire Department, which was assisted on the case by Horry County Fire Rescue. He said all the agencies that studied the fire reached a consensus on the cause.

“The fire originated within some of the electrical components of the golf cart that was parked under the house,” he said. “The whole investigative community that was involved in that investigation would agree to that fact.”

A spokesperson for Club Car could not be reached for comment.

Frank Matheis, director of corporate marketing communications for Curtis Instruments, said he couldn’t discuss the matter because he wasn’t aware of the lawsuit.

“We really don’t know anything about this situation,” he said.

The fire broke out in the early morning hours of April 20 at the three-story house the Lambs had rented for Easter weekend.

Melissa Lamb, 38, had been sleeping in a third-floor bedroom and was the first to discover the fire, the lawsuit states. She woke up the four children, who are only identified in court papers by their initials.

Her daughter, who was 15 at the time, fled down a burning staircase, severely injuring her hands and feet.

With the staircase engulfed in flames, the other three children, then ages 8, 9 and 15, moved to a second story deck. There, the teen on the deck helped the two younger children jump to Melissa Lamb’s daughter, who was standing on the driveway and caught the kids. She then helped break her friend’s fall when the 15-year-old on the deck leapt.

Neighbors had to stop Melissa Lamb’s daughter from going back inside the burning house to search for her mother, whose body was later found in the second story of the home. She died of asphyxiation from smoke inhalation.

Joel Lamb Jr., 46, fled to a third-floor deck where he also jumped to escape the fire. The father landed on the concrete driveway, injuring his head and back. He was pronounced dead the following day at Grand Strand Medical Center.

All four children suffered burns, according to the lawsuit. Melissa Lamb’s daughter was taken to the Joseph M. Still Burn Center in Augusta, Georgia, for skin grafts.

The lawsuit states that the Lambs had rented the four-passenger electric golf cart from Woody’s Beach Rentals, which had purchased the vehicle from Ocean Lakes Family Campground the previous year. The campground had bought the cart new in 2008.

On the afternoon before the fire, three of the kids planned to take the cart to the Garden City Pier, but when rain started falling they turned around and returned to the beach house.

They parked the cart in the covered garage on the ground floor and plugged the cart’s cord into a wall outlet to charge the battery, according to court records. After that, no one used the vehicle.

The lawsuit states that the cart was not designed to prevent corrosive moisture and salt air from causing problems with the its electronics and battery compartment. The court documents allege that Club Car and Curtis Instruments should have known about the design problems.

“As a result of their design, manufacture and assembly, the electrical systems and componentry within the Subject Golf Car experienced arcing, sparking and the unwanted, unintended energization of certain internal circuits during the charging process,” the lawsuit states, adding that “as a result of their design, manufacture and assembly, the electrical systems and componentry within the Subject Golf Car ignited, directly and proximately causing the Fire.”

The lawsuit asks for damages for pain and suffering permanent impairment. That amount would be determined by a jury.

This story was originally published March 7, 2016 at 12:00 AM with the headline "Fatal Garden City Beach fire leads to lawsuit against golf cart maker."