Firefighters battle a blaze that rages at a shopping mall and call center in December 2017 in Davao City, Philippines. Photo: Manman Dejeto/AP

A Connecticut company doing business overseas is fending off litigation, after finding itself at the center of a tragedy that took place nearly 9,000 miles away.

Shelton-based Dynata LLC operated a call-center in Davao City, Philippines, where 38 people died in a fire, according to litigation playing out in Waterbury Superior Court. But it allegedly put profits over safety, according to the complaint by Waterbury-based solo attorney Joseph DeCicco, the court-appointed administrator of the workers' estates.

The company, the lawsuit says, "took jobs away from the United States, outsourced those jobs to a foreign company that they operated and controlled, and exploited the disadvantages of foreign citizens by paying very little in wage and benefits and providing little or no workplace safety oversight in order to keep operational costs as low as possible and business profits as high as possible."

The suit continues: "The labor cost, due to outsourcing of these jobs by defendant Dynata LLC, represents a huge saving to defendant," which allegedly paid staff $175 to $350 a month. The majority of the calls made from the call center were polling and data inquiries conducted in English and placed to individuals living in the United States.

Dynata, formerly known as Survey Sampling International LLC, ran the call center in the Philippines through its agent, SSI Philippines Inc. The December 2017 fire occurred on the fourth floor, and those killed were trapped and unable to exit the building, according to information from plaintiff counsel at the Nolan Law Group in Chicago.

Nolan Law Group attorney Donald Nolan and Thomas Routh are working alongside local counsel in Connecticut, Jamie Sullivan, a partner with Hartford-based Howard, Kohn, Sprague & FitzGerald.

"There was little oversight of the management of the facility. It appears that the negligence on behalf of the defendants and their agents is clear, and that they failed to exercise reasonable action to prevent the deaths of these individuals," Routh said. "This lawsuit is also about making changes so this does not happen again."

The lawsuit doesn't specify damages, but Routh said, "We had a number of death cases, and that will be very significant as far as damages go."

The complaint was filed on behalf of 29 of the 38 people who died in the fire. In addition to defendant Dynata, the suit names two Connecticut-based executives who helped run the company when it was known as Survey Sampling International. The co-defendants, David Weather and former president and chief executive officer Christopher Fanning, no longer work for the company.

Representing Dynata is Greenwich-based Withers Bergman partner James Nealon, who declined to comment on the matter Wednesday. Dynata, through a representative, told the Connecticut Law Tribune it wouldn't comment because the case is pending. Weather also declined to comment, while Fanning didn't respond to a request for comment.

According to the lawsuit, Philippines fire safety officials "repeatedly warned of unsafe, dangerous, and life-threatening conditions that existed in the premises in which plaintiff decedents worked. Yet those known dangerous conditions and others persisted for years through and including the time of this tragedy."

For instance, the lawsuit says, a fire alarm for the fourth floor was not connected to the alarm systems for the three other floors of the building and didn't function properly. And, the suit says, steel lockers obstructed one of the two exits on the fourth floor, leaving it inaccessible.