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Posted on 10/08/2002 6:14:36 AM PDT by Sweet_Sunflower29
WEST PALM BEACH -- The handgun used to kill popular Lake Worth Middle School teacher Barry Grunow goes on trial today, portrayed as a dangerous, defective product that has led a notorious life of crime.
Grunow's widow claims in a civil suit against the gun's distributor, Valor Corp. of Sunrise, that her husband's death might have been averted if the gun had been less dangerous and had been secured with a gun lock.
Valor argues that responsibility for the death lies with Nathaniel Brazill, the student who shot Grunow, and a Brazill family friend who left the gun unsecured in his home.
The liability will be decided by a jury in a trial before Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga.
The case is being watched across the nation because it's the first of its kind to address two hot-button gun issues at once: the flaws of the so-called Saturday night special handgun and the concept of safety locks on weapons.
Among witnesses will be Pam Grunow, who lost her husband and the father of her two children when Brazill shot the teacher in May 2000 on the middle-school campus. Brazill, who was sentenced to 28 years in prison for second-degree murder, is being brought to the trial from the Hillsborough Correctional Institution. Valor called him to be questioned on the stand.
Grunow is ready for the trial, said her attorney, Rebecca Larson.
"Pam Grunow feels very strongly about the nature of the firearm that was used to kill her husband," said Larson, who will argue the case with attorney Bob Montgomery.
Although she would not give a specific amount, Larson said she will ask the jury to award damages to the Grunow family that are "very, very significant in order to dignify the nature of the loss."
Valor, for its part, will try to show that it was not to blame for the teacher's death. John Renzulli, an attorney for Valor, has argued that the gun did what it was supposed to do: fire a projectile. In court documents, the gun distributor said it intends also to cast blame on Elmore McCray, the family friend who owned the gun, because it was stored unsafely in a cookie tin.
Brazill shot Grunow in the head with a.25-caliber Raven handgun, the type of cheap weapon known as a Saturday night special.
Pam Grunow's lawsuit claims that Valor was liable for her husband's death because the company knew the weapon was poorly constructed, inaccurate, unreliable, easily concealed and primarily used in criminal activities.
In addition, the lawsuit claims Valor was negligent because of the poor design of the gun and its lack of such safety features as a lock. The manufacturer of the Raven is no longer in business. "It's a pretty novel type of case," said Allen Rostron, an attorney for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, which is assisting Grunow's legal team.
The Grunow case will involve a great deal of expert testimony, Rostron said, including former agents from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms who will discuss which types of guns are most often used in crimes. Other experts are expected to testify about how handguns are often not stored safely.
"Absurd" is how Allen Gottlieb, founder of the pro-gun Second Amendment Foundation, refers to some of the claims in the Grunow lawsuit.
It is "absurd" to state that.25-caliber handguns are used only for crime. They tend to get traced more by law enforcement primarily because they are inexpensive weapons and sell more, Gottlieb said. People who buy a small-caliber handgun get it for the cost and use it for self-defense, he said.
Gottlieb said he doesn't see the point in suing the distributor because the gun essentially worked as it was supposed to, but Brazill misused it.
"Sue the kid. Sue the family," he said. "Suing the distributor of the gun is absolutely crazy."
The gun industry's National Shooting Sports Foundation points to a ruling by the Maryland Supreme Court this year in a case involving the death of a 3-year-old boy who found his father's Ruger pistol and shot himself.
"There was no malfunction of the gun; regrettably, it worked exactly as it was designed and intended to work and as any ordinary consumer would have expected it to work," ruled Judge Alan Wilner. The carelessness of the boy's father was to blame, the judge said.
Early in the Grunow case, an attorney for the pawnshop that sold the Raven handgun to Brazill family friend McCray accused the Grunow attorneys of using the courts to achieve a political goal of more gun restrictions.
A handgun, said attorney John Marion, is no more defective "than a knife or scissors used to cut, or gasoline used to burn."
Professor Glenn Reynolds, a constitutional law expert at the University of Tennessee College of Law, said he believes "the prospects are extremely poor" for Grunow to win her case in court.
Similar claims have been unsuccessful, including the lawsuits of several municipalities against gun makers.
In the Navegar Inc. case, in which the families of victims of an office shooting in California lost their case against the manufacturer of semiautomatic weapons, the California Supreme Court ruled that the victims of the shooting can't hold the manufacturer liable.
Reynolds said it is not legally sound for Grunow to claim that the distributor was liable because it should have known the Raven handgun would fall into the wrong hands and be misused. As far as he knows, Reynolds said, no court has upheld such a claim.
Valor is the only remaining defendant in the Grunow case. The pawnshop owner settled for $275,000. McCray's insurance company settled for $300,000.
Grunow attorney Larson said she's confident about their arguments against the gun's distributor. The plaintiffs have defeated Valor's attempts to dismiss the case and last week were buoyed when Labarga dismissed Valor's request to keep out data about how often the Raven handgun is used in crimes.
"From a legal standpoint, we've already conquered the uphill battles," Larson said. "Now we have an opportunity to have a jury determine the issues in this case."
That's ridiculous. How could the trial lawyers possibly cash in on this murder if responsibility is placed on the murderer?
Say what!? How in the hell could this even come close to being admissable evidence. As the man quoted says, this is BEYOND "absurd".
I think you are confusing two trials. There was the "wrestling death" were an overgrown punk beat a little girl to death while his mother, a cop, was upstairs(Lorenzo Tate is his name, I believe). Then there was thus one. The kid got suspended from school on the last day, got mad, went home and got the gun, and came back and shot the teacher. He claimed he didn't mean to and all sorts of boo hoo, but the security camera showed him clearly pull the gun, point it and fire. I thought it was unjust that he wasn't convicted of First Degree murder.
With "logical minds" like that, how do those idiot liberals manage to stumble through even a single day in the real world?!!!
TXnMA (No Longer!!!)
Using this tragedy,for their own policital gain.
I feel sorry, for this young family for their lost. The monies that she received already, will never bring back her husband, but this suit is crazy.
Stupid woman... Grief brings out the crazy in people...
Why not? For some conservatives, this logic holds true for marijuana and pictures of naked women. Same logic, different boogeymen.
Stupid woman... Grief Greed brings out the crazy in people...
TXnMA (No Longer!!!)
Got any?
I don't give a rotten rat's behind how po' widdle Pam Grunow 'feels', and neither should the law. The law should be concerned with facts. The facts appear to be that the weapon in question was misused by a convicted murderer, who is now serving a lengthy term of years in prison for his crime. There's no legitimate question of faulty manufacture. Miz Grunow and the people holding her leash over at Brady Campaign to ban handguns are misusing the courts in no less heinous a way than the murderer's misuse of a handgun.
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