The children of a famous Santa Barbara farming couple who died from carbon monoxide poisoningat their friends’ home early this year are suing the homeowners and a water heater company over their parents’ tragic death.
Coffee and exotic-fruit farmers John “Jay” and Kristen Ruskey were found dead at their friends’ home in Cambria on Feb. 8, according to the San Luis Obispo County Sheriff’s Office.
The Ruskey children — Kasurina, who was 19 at the time, and 16-year-old twins Aiden and Sean — filed the lawsuit against homeowners Ben and Robin Korman and water heater manufacturer Navien Inc.
The lawsuit revealed horrific details about the hours leading up to the death of the Ruskeys. The couple had called 911 hours before their deaths after the husband started throwing up uncontrollably and lost control of his bowels, according to the suit.
According to the suit, the couple left their children at home on Feb. 7 to attend a birthday party hosted by Ben and Robin Korman at their Cambria home. Between 50 and 60 guests came, and the couple ended up spending the night in the guest bedroom.
The couple went to sleep around 2 a.m. on Feb. 8, the lawsuit says. It claims the home’s water heater kept turning on through the night to keep up with demand from a house filled with guests.
Each time, the suit claims, “it discharged carbon monoxide through the failed Subject Venting System into the Laundry Room and, through the connecting door, into the Guest Bedroom.”
The only smoke and carbon monoxide detector in or just outside the bedroom “had been disconnected from its electrical wiring and was inoperable,” the suit alleges.
It claims the detector was disconnected before the couple arrived and that the hosts “knew or in the exercise of reasonable care should have known that it was disconnected.”
“No alarm ever sounded,” the lawsuit says.
Around 4:34 a.m., Kristen called 911 because Jay was in serious trouble, the lawsuit says.
According to the Santa Barbara Independent, when paramedics arrived, Kristen told them that Jay was “having a bad trip” after he had eaten some chocolate laced with psychedelic mushrooms. Those who attended the party said they heard Jay throwing up and screaming.
He was advised to go to the hospital for “a higher level of care” based “on the totality of the circumstances and the decedent’s observed behavior,” the outlet reported.
However, paramedics left after he refused to go for any medical treatment.
The lawsuit alleges that Jay “was vomiting, exhibited seizure-like activity, and had lost control of his bowels while in bed,” claiming that each of these is a potential sign of acute carbon monoxide poisoning.
The suit says that without an alarm or working detector, “neither the responding personnel nor the Korman Defendants nor anyone else at the Subject Property identified carbon monoxide as the cause of Jay’s symptoms.”
It adds that “no one tested the air in the Guest Bedroom or the Laundry Room, shut off the Subject Water Heater, or ventilated the space.”
The couple subsequently went back to bed.
The next morning, between 9:30 and 10 a.m., guests went to check on the couple and found them in different places in the home.
“They [the guests] found Kristen lying unresponsive on the floor of the Laundry Room, inside the door connecting it to the Guest Bedroom. They found Jay in the bed in the Guest Bedroom, unresponsive, pulseless, and not breathing,” the suit says.
Guests began performing CPR and called 911 again around 10:20 a.m. San Luis Obispo County sheriff’s deputies, firefighters, and paramedics responded. Despite continued resuscitative efforts, the couple was pronounced dead at the property, the suit says.
A county coroner’s investigator examined both victims at the scene and saw no signs of injury, the lawsuit says. A forensic pathologist then performed autopsies on Feb. 12.
“In each of them, he found cerebral edema, pulmonary congestion, and cherry-pink lividity, the hallmark findings of carbon monoxide poisoning,” the suit says.
The California Post contacted Navien Inc. and the Kormans for comment.
The pair was known locally as the founders of Good Land Organics, an exotic-fruit farm, as well as a coffee business called FRINJ Coffee.
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