Oswald in the doorway: the blog of the Oswald Innocence Campaign, by Ralph Cinque

If a gas heating furnace was defective and an old couple was gassed to death, wouldn't the manufacturer be liable? Or, if it was a mistake of the service company in maintaining the equipment, wouldn't they be liable? Wouldn't there at least be a civil lawsuit? 

I was involved in a scandal concerning a home heating company. They were maintaining my electric heat pump, but they kept saying that a certain electrical part with contact points was burnt out and had to be replaced. They would show me the burnt contact points and say it was wear and tear. The cost was $150 each time. That happened maybe 3 times over as many years. But then the state of Texas got involved because it turned out that those contact points were supposed to look burnt, and there was nothing wrong with them. The company was just scamming- me and quite a few others. 

So, there was a big lawsuit, both civil and criminal, and I remember that I was given back all the money for which I had been ripped off, plus some extra in punitive damages. 

Now, in that case, nobody actually got hurt or killed. Yet, the state of Texas took it very seriously. 

So, an old couple gets gassed to death in their posh home, where it involved no negligence on their part, and there was no investigation and no one was held accountable?