Local amplification of the story follows:
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Teacher's widow sues, targets guns
By Noah Bierman, Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Thursday, October 5, 2000
WEST PALM BEACH -- Slain teacher Barry Grunow's widow filed suit Wednesday against the distributor of the cheap handgun used to kill her husband on the last day of school.
"If I get a judgment against this distributor, I can tell you that tens of thousands of guns will be removed from the shelves," said Bob Montgomery, Pam Grunow's attorney.
Grunow is also suing the Hypoluxo Pawn Shop, which originally sold the gun, and Nathaniel Brazill, the seventh-grader who pulled the trigger outside Grunow's classroom. Brazill now sits in jail, awaiting a first-degree murder trial for the May 26 Lake Worth Middle School shooting. Brazill was sued through his mother, Polly Powell.
The suit follows a tide of litigation filed by cities against gun manufacturers in recent years. A national nonprofit organization, the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, is joining Montgomery as co-counsel along with local lawyer Edna Caruso. The center has participated in many of the gun suits, including one filed by Miami-Dade County. Judges in some states have dismissed the suits, while others have let them proceed.
"It may be very viable," said Gerald Kogan, a retired Florida Supreme Court chief justice who now serves on the University of Miami's law school faculty. "This goes along with the lawsuits against bars for serving booze to people who are already intoxicated."
The gun distributor named in the suit, Valor Corp. of Florida, is based in Sunrise. A company officer said President Burt Newton was out of town. She declined to comment further.
Grunow is not suing the Raven .25-caliber semiautomatic handgun's manufacturer -- Raven Arms Inc. of Industry, Calif. -- because it is no longer in business, the suit says.
Elmore McCray, the family friend from whom Brazill stole the gun, settled with the Grunow family two weeks ago, Montgomery said. His homeowners insurance company paid Grunow $300,000, Montgomery said. McCray had no comment.
A spokesman for Pam Grunow said she also did not want to comment.
The suit calls the Raven a "Saturday Night Special" and claims it is low quality, inaccurate and disproportionately used by juveniles and criminals. It claims distributors should have foreseen that a young person like Brazill could easily get one and conceal it from a school security guard.
The Raven .25, available for as little as $80, does seem popular among young criminals. A U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms study released last year said it appeared most often when police in Miami were tracing guns used by suspects 17 and younger.
The annual study covered 27 cities, but did not produce national figures. Overall, the gun was the ninth most popular gun traced in Miami for the year ending July 1998, the most recent period with data available.
Hoping to change practices
Montgomery said he hopes a big verdict will change industry practices. In particular, he said he wants the gun taken off the market. Jon Lowy, an attorney with the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, said he wants to force gun companies to put safety locks on the guns.
The Palm Beach County Commission voted in August to require adults who have children around to keep guns under safety lock. Commissioners are expected to give the law final passage this month.
Among the center's successes was a settlement it and several cities reached with Smith & Wesson in March. The nation's largest gunmaker agreed to adopt a slew of changes in the way it makes and markets guns, including shipping all guns with child safety locks and improving its gun-tracking capability.
"This suit would have no effect on law-abiding people, responsible adults being able to use guns if they so choose," Lowy said.
Irving Mandel, the Hypoluxo Pawn Shop owner, said he was following the law when he sold the gun 13 years ago to a man who is now dead.
ATF officials inspected his records after Grunow was shot and did not arrest him. McCray told authorities he got the gun seven years ago from the original owner's wife.
"It's getting to be really obscene," Mandel said. "Tie up the court with stupid cases, take advantage of somebody's death and make some money from it."
Defense praises suit
Montgomery said he is not taking this case for the money but to take Saturday Night Specials off the street.
George Russum, president of the Second Amendment Coalition of Florida, said the fact that the guns are cheap shouldn't be used against them. Poor people deserve the right to protect themselves as much as people who can afford better guns, he said.
"It's like the people that go buy used cars because they have to have a means of transportation getting around," he said.
Although Brazill was named in the lawsuit, his attorney praised Montgomery for filing it. Civil penalties are the least of the 14-year-old defendant's problems, he said.
"Montgomery can't go into court and say 'Bad kid, bad gun,' " attorney Bob Udell said. "He's got to go in and say 'Good kid, bad gun.' "
Staff writers Clay Lambert and Marc Caputo contributed to this story.
noah_bierman@pbpost.com[/quote]
Sometimes you move to hell, and sometimes hell moves to you.
For those of you so fourtunate to live in less hostile climes, I'd like to offer some observations as a local.
Robert Montgomery, a.k.a. "Billion Dollar Bob", is fresh from winning Florida's lawsuit against the tobacco industry. When the settlement for something over 10 billion dollars was announced, Montgomery's firm filed a lawsuit against the state, demanding over a billion (yes, "billion" with a "b") dollars in attorney's fees.
Mongomery was retained by Ms. Grunow within hours of her husband's death. In addition to the $300,000 dollar settlement mentioned earlier, the widow has received $20,000 in personal life insurance, $25,000 from the state Victim's Compensation Trust Fund (for state employees killed on the job), and will receive her husband's full salary of $40,809 each year until 2017, when he would have retired. In addition, she and her children will also have full health insurance paid for by the local school district until that date.
This totals well over a million dollars already, and in addition to the gun-related suits, Montgomery won't rule out sueing the school district for liability. How may of us would receive this kind of compensation if we were killed on the job?
In local television coverage of the story, Montgomery was interviewed handling a .25 Raven, slide closed, finger on the trigger, gesticulating about with the weapon. As the camera was focused in a tight shot of the firearm, the muzzle crossed the plane of the view several times. Presumably, this means that Montgomery was also pointing the gun, finger on the trigger, at the camera-person's head.
As a line of legal reasoning, this suit is akin to a car manufacturer and dealer being sued for a car that was privately resold, stolen, and then used in the commission of a crime.
With all due respect to Brazill's attorney (none at all), I'd have to say "Bad kid, cheap gun, rich widow".
(As an aside, the Post is running a message board on the subject
here. Not apparently very active, though.)
[This message has been edited by RepublicThunderbolt (edited October 06, 2000).]
