Quebec woman who lost husband in Legionnaires' outbreak wants to sue province

A lawyer requesting permission to filea class-action lawsuit over the 2012 deadly Legionnaires' outbreak in Quebec City says public health officials weren't properly prepared to deal with the situation.

Jean-PierreMnardargued at the Quebec City courthouse on Tuesday that mismanagement bypublic health officials made the outbreak last longerand led to more deaths.

Mnardis representingSolangeAllen, who lost her husband Claude Desjardins to the severe pneumonia caused bytheLegionellabacterium.

Desjardinswas among the 14 people who died that summer.

Public health officials said 167 other people were infected by the bacteriumover the course of the summer.

It took more than two months to find the source of the bacteria, which turned out to bewater in the rooftop cooling system of a downtown building.

The proposed lawsuit contends the province should have established a mandatory list of all buildings with cooling systems, as recommended in the late 1990s after an earlier Legionnaires' outbreak in the city.

Allen said her husband was 64 when he died and four months away from retirement.

She was joined in court Tuesday byothers who lost a relativeto listen to legal arguments about whether the class-action should be allowed.

The proposed lawsuit isaimed at public health officials, the province of Quebec and the owner of the building where the bacteria flourished.Quebec's attorney generalis also named in the proposed suit.