Posted on 02/25/2003 7:16:34 AM PST by Cagey
The family of a convicted burglar who was electrocuted in 1997 when he tried to break in to a bar in Aurora after-hours and triggered a homemade booby trap has been awarded a $75,000 jury verdict to be paid by the owners of the bar and the property.
Larry Harris was wrong to try to break in to George O's Place, but the bar and property owners share responsibility for his death, the Kane County jury reasoned in ordering the wrongful-death payout after a two-week trial.
Frustrated after three burglaries at his tavern in a month, Jessie Ingram installed the homemade security system in late July 1997. He jury-rigged the inside of the bar's windows so anyone breaking in would get a strong shock, then posted several warning signs outside, including one outside the window Harris broke in through.
Drunk and high on cocaine, Harris, 37, either didn't see or ignored the warnings. He forced open a rear window and crawled in, triggering the homemade, electrified booby trap just five days after it was installed.
In a verdict returned Friday, jurors placed 50 percent of the blame for the death on Harris, but assigned the bar's owners 40 percent and placed 10 percent on the property's owner.
No criminal charges were filed.
Jurors weren't allowed to be told that Harris was drunk and on cocaine, nor that he had served time in prison for two burglary convictions.
The verdict sends a message that property owners can't use lethal security systems to defend their homes and businesses, said John Winters, the Chicago lawyer who represented Harris' mother and brother in the civil case.
"You can't set these type of traps because property isn't worth a human life," Winters said, adding that the booby traps might just as easily have been tripped by firefighters or police officers answering an emergency call at the bar.
Ingram was a defendant in the lawsuit but died last year before the case went to trial against the remaining defendants, including his wife, Barbara Ingram.
Barbara Ingram's lawyer said the award left the Aurora woman "devastated."
"She's the victim, and she gets victimized again," said attorney Fred Morelli, who also represented the property owner, Alma Moody of Virginia.
Morelli said the jury ended up giving Harris' family "more than he would have earned in his entire life" and promised to appeal the verdict.
Winters contends there was little evidence linking Harris to the earlier break-ins and said it wasn't clear why Harris was entering the bar through the window around 2 a.m.
"We're never going to know Larry's intent, but we know Jessie's intent," Winters said, noting that, after installing and testing the security system, Ingram then boosted its power to 220 volts from 110 volts. "There was a clear intent to cause harm."
Harris' brother, William, couldn't be reached Monday for comment. In an earlier interview, he said, "I know my brother wasn't an angel, but I don't feel like the way he died was justified."
I believe that would be Katko v Briney (183 N.W.2d 657) A man (Briney) booby-trapped an abandoned shack with a spring gun after some robberies. The spring gun went off and shot Katko in the leg when he broke in looking for some old mason jars. Katko sued, Briney lost.
http://www.newsaic.com/mled.html
See there in lies the problem, I live in the peoples cooperative of New York where the perp's position and direction when shot, stabbed etc. are important. Texas seems to protect the honest citizen much better.
NYS has nothing to offer and if I did not have to consider moving my pipe organ (a musical albatross if there ever was one), I'd be heading to a state that allows me to protect my family and as a side benefit may actually have EE jobs available.
Anyone seeking to enslave me, by helping themselves to the product of my labor, can expect to be met with lethal force. You're free to not defend yourself and the product of your labors as you see fit. Don't expect the rest of us to just smile, nod and wink when people violate our rights.
"Disrespect me and I'll kill you"
Why alter what I said? I said if you violate my rights I will defend them. Once you've abrogated the concept of individual rights, once you've introduced the concept of force to our social interaction - prepare yourself for force. I have no sympathy for theives and their sympathizers. At the end of the day, if the jerk had the good sense to respect the rights of others he'd still be alive to get drunk and coked up.
We have police and courts to deal with lawbreakers. We don't need or want individual citizens setting themselves up as their own justice system.
They're too busy making money off the War on Drugs to chase people for petty things like crime. Ask the English how it's working out, since their courts have essentially eliminated their right to self defense and the cops have announced they're just worried about rape, murder and hate crimes.
Cops and courts are an aid to the defense of individual rights, but the onus remains on the individual to be vigilant against incursions of his rights. The state cannot and will not always be there. I want drunk, coked up burglars to know in advance their actions can and will be detrimental to their well being. I'd rather show up at my property and find a theif's toasty corpse outside than find him inside my property waiting to ambush me. You think being able to call the police to come clean up the mess after he breaks in or ambushes me is the best option. We disagree...
Much of this dialogue between all us reasonable fellows makes me wonder whether we are wasting our breath. In years past, horse-stealing was punishable by hanging, not because the punishment fit the crime but because hanging is an awfully good deterrent.
When thieves steal as casually and repeatedly as the coke-addled perp in our story, maybe we should allow the use of lethal force in reply. Criminals' greatest motivation against committing their deeds is fear.
I have thought many times in the past that carjacking should be punishable by death; and that any crime committed that endangers the life of any innocent, whether in a vehicle or on the street, should be punishable by death. Sounds cruel by today's standards but a mere hundred years ago this was considered fair justice.
Wonder if our nation will ever return to days like that?
In all good fun, I'd like to see someone prove that governments are not a necessary evil. How many millions have been killed by governments in recorded history in a war over this or that. Even various religions behaving like governments have killed millions. No level of anarchy in recorded history has killed close to the number of people governments have.
"It's the law", "in the name of security", "for the children", "for your protection" are code words used for centuries by governments to support their various actions.
Governments take on a life of their own and the goal becomes expanding the power of government at the expense of the governed.
Do I advocate anarchy? Of course not. Government is a necessary evil which must be contained and kept to a bare minimum. Our founding fathers understood this too bad way too many people in this country have forgotten it or are willing to give up freedom in the name of........
For petty theft, I might agree, but I don't agree completely. A murderer would take from me the *remainder* of my life, but the thief takes some portion of my life up to that point.
Property is acquired by investing the most valuable thing you have: Time. Time is the one thing you cannot buy more of, and your life's energy spent needlessly or taken by force is the worst thing that can be done. Somewhere in the spectrum there is a threshold where it is not only right but morally imperative to protect property, bought by the investment of life energy.
The thief is merely taking a life in smaller chunks instead of all at once. Depending on the amount of life energy invested, compared to the amount of life remaining, the thief may in fact be taking more than the murderer.
I have to disagree. Horse-stealing was punished as it was because back then, a man's possessions, particularly his horse, had much more value than they do now. A man without a horse would likely be deprived of a way to earn a living, at the very least. Many possessions, in Frontier America, were literally the difference between life and death, especially because they were so difficult to replace.
In our times, individual possessions have lost much of their value. Few of them are truly necessary, and nearly all of them are easily replaceable. Even so, I still believe property rights to be as fundamental as the right to life.
In our current legal environement, the results would've probably been the same: The bar owner and property owner would've still been forced to pay, for not having safety glass.
MM
Then there was that awesome anti-carjacking security system that was implemented a couple of months ago: a minivan full of martial arts instructors. Awesome.
MM
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