Brother of priest files lawsuit over Butte natural gas explosion

The brother of a Butte priest who was seriously injured in a natural gas explosion in his apartment on Easter Sunday 2007 has filed a lawsuit against NorthWestern Energy.

The Rev. John McCarthy filed the lawsuit in District Court in Butte Monday. He is seeking compensation for medical expenses, pain and suffering, emotional distress and property damage. He is also seeking punitive damages.

The April 8, 2007 explosion severely burned the Rev. James C. McCarthy, and he was hospitalized for months. Investigators have said natural gas leaking from a supply line, ignited when McCarthy lighted a cigarette, caused the explosion.

The lawsuit says James McCarthy, 71, died in November 2007 as a result of his burns.

The lawsuit blames a faulty threaded elbow joint on the service line leading to the house for the gas leak.

At the time, Butte fire marshal John Lasky said McCarthy and his neighbors smelled gas more than 16 hours before the explosion, but did not report it to authorities.

The lawsuit also names as a defendant Leonard Leveaux, who was a division manager for NorthWestern at the time of the explosion.

NorthWestern spokeswoman Claudia Rapkoch says the company doesn't comment on pending litigation.

The Rev. James McCarthy was treated at a burn center in Salt Lake City and was later hospitalized in Bozeman and Billings. He died on Nov. 27, 2007. His obituary also listed complications from Guillian-Barre syndrome as contributing to his death.

The Butte lawsuit comes less than two weeks after an explosion, blamed on a leak in a natural gas supply line at a downtown Bozeman art gallery, leveled several buildings and killed a woman who worked at the gallery.

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Information from: The Montana Standard, http://www.mtstandard.com