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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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Teen Victim Wants to Buy Gun Manufacturer
Mon Aug 9, 4:16 PM ET Add U.S. National - AP to My Yahoo!
By LISA LEFF, Associated Press Writer
SAN FRANCISCO - Sometimes Brandon Maxfield forgets. He will be cruising down the street with his best friend, talking about pro wrestling, music and girls, when it dawns on him with a familiar flash of embarassment that it's not his rainbow-spiked hair strangers are staring at.
"Then I'll be like, oh yeah, I'm in a wheelchair," said the Willits, Calif., teenager, who was paralyzed from the neck down after being shot by a babysitter a decade ago and gets around by manipulating mechanical sensors around his head.
Maxfield, 17, is in the final days of a tense, quixotic gambit to buy and dismantle the company that made the gun that left him a quadriplegic.
Last year the teen won a record $24 million judgment against Bryco Arms, its distribution arm and its owner. Bryco was forced into bankruptcy, and on Thursday, a federal judge in Florida will auction off 75,600 unassembled guns and other remaining assets.
Maxfield hopes to buy the inventory, melt it down and create a sculpture from the metal. It is tempting to see divine retribution in such a scheme, but the teen and his lawyer, Richard Ruggieri, insist revenge is not their motivation — they simply want to make sure no one else is hurt.
"It started with horror, the realization that — notwithstanding the fact that we had this unanimous finding of defect — there was nothing in the law to prevent them from putting these defective guns back on the market," said Ruggieri, who took on Maxfield's case in 2001 when no other lawyers would.
Ned Nashban, the lawyer representing Bryco owner Bruce Jennings in the bankruptcy, described Maxfield's acquisition attempt as a publicity stunt that only has delayed the gun maker's efforts to settle his debts.
"From our standpoint, it's not a moral question of keeping guns off the street or not," Nashban said. "Bankruptcy court is not the place to socially legislate. It's to create the most money to pay creditors."
Maxfield's life-changing injury happened when he was 7 and a 20-year-old family friend who was babysitting thought he heard a suspicious noise and grabbed a gun from a dresser drawer. The babysitter called Brandon's mother, who instructed him to immediately unload the .38-caliber pistol. While trying to do that, the babysitter accidentally pulled the trigger.
The bullet struck Brandon in the chin and went out through his neck, shattering his spine.
Since the accident, Maxfield has spent more than 500 days in the hospital and been treated for pneumonia 28 times. His spine is degenerating, and doctors say a metal rod must eventuallly be inserted in his neck to support it. But that will limit the mobility of his head, the only body part he can fully control.
"I always wanted to protect my kids and this is something you can't reverse and you can't erase," said Sue Stansberry, Maxfield's mother. "I wish now I had locked it up in a locked case. I didn't do that, and I will have to live with that for the rest of my life."
A jury in Oakland assigned more than half the blame for what happened to the boy's parents and the babysitter who fired the gun. But they said the gun maker also was liable because the pistol could only be unloaded when its trigger safety catch was switched off.
The jury awarded damages totaling $50.9 million — an amount calculated to compensate Maxfield for pain and suffering, future medical and educational expenses, lost earnings and diminished life expectancy.
The trust established to guard the funds has collected $8.75 million from an ex-wife of Jennings and from the insurance company of the firm that distributed the gun to the pawnshop where Maxfield's parents bought it.
Since neither the parents nor the babysitter have any money, the $24 million awarded from Jennings and his companies represent most of what Maxfield can expect to get.
But he has yet to collect any money from Jennings, who shuttered his Costa Mesa, Calif.-based factory and moved to Florida. Jennings laid off 25 employees and put his manufacturing business into bankruptcy.
So far, Maxfield and Bryco's former foreman, Paul Jimenez, are the only interested buyers in the bankruptcy auction.
The bidding will start at $175,000, the amount raised through a non-profit organization Ruggieri set up to take donations over the Internet, since the damages won from the accident cannot be used for that purpose under the terms of the trust.
Ruggieri maintains that Jimenez is only a front for the wealthy Jennings, who in a 1999 interview with Business Week magazine said that if his company were sued, he would "go away until the litigation passes by, then re-form and build guns to the new standard — if there is a new standard."
Maxfield, who is entering his senior year in high school and hopes to study marine biology or paleontology in college, said it frustrates and angers him that Jennings is, in his view, trying to pull a fast one.
"It was his idea to do this," Maxfield said, referring to Jennings' pre-trial testimony that he designed the gun to be unloaded in a firing position to solve a jamming problem. "He should take full responsibility."
Maxfield hasn't decided what the sculpture would be, and isn't sure what he'd do with the other equipment.
"I was thinking I could make wheelchairs for other kids or something like that," he said, "but we might just completely destroy it."
The fundraising and media attention has supplied Maxfield with a new sense of purpose — a chance to do something for others in a life that requires others to do practically everything for him.
Stansberry said she worries about how her son will handle the disappointment if he loses the auction.
"Every day that's all he talks about, getting these guns off the street so no other kids will be hurt," she said. "From a mom's perspective, I hope it really happens, because he has put his heart and soul in this."
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Come on, this is outrageous. First of all, the gun was not in any way defective. The babysitter may have been mentally defective, but that's hardly the fault of the gun manufacturer. Sure, the gun has to have the safety off in order to unload - but that's a convenience and a self-defense issue, and it certainly was not an illegal design mechanism, nor a hidden one that no one knew about.
Basically, a gun manufacturer is getting screwed by the American tort system - and by a victim who, quite frankly, is being selfish - for no reason other than a lawyer was able to a)manipulate the jury selection process to his benefit (he probably had a bunch of soccor moms on the jury), and b)convince the twelve retards that the gun manufacturer had partial responsibility for the actions of the babysitter.
This is just indicative of the "blame someone else, preferably someone with money" mindset of tort lawyers, mindless juries, and worst of all, US tort laws  
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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Eh?
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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quote:
Do you understand the point of a safety? So why the hell are you discussing "convenience issues"? |
Don't misquote me. Presented here is my entire quote, with the parts you left out in bold.
quote:
but that's a convenience and a self-defense issue, and it certainly was not an illegal design mechanism, nor a hidden one that no one knew about. |
What type of gun was it? If it was a type generally used by, say, military and police forces, then being forced to safety the gun to eject the clip and load a new clip would be absolutely ridiculous. Even a gun used entirely in the private sector for self defense should not be designed that way. And as I pointed out, it was not even a hidden design issue, nor was there any actual defect in the worksmanship or performance of the gun.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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quote:
As far as I'm concerned that's a crucial flaw in the design, one that contributed heavily to this incident. |
Actually, had the ****tard babysitter been practicing proper gun safety procedures - or had he not touched the goddamn thing in the first place - none of this would have happened.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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Asher,
quote:
And why should a regular citizen have a gun designed for military and police forces? Either way, we have a problem... |
Why shouldn't a private citizen own a handgun used by the military or police? Hell, most categories of handguns - from 22s to 45s, and everything in between - ARE used by either the police or military. And that being the case, why design a handgun that must be unloaded with the safety on?
quote:
If you're forced to reload while an intruder is attacking you, I think you've either got such incredibly bad aim that you shouldn't have a gun anywhere near you, or you're hopelessly outnumbered and are ****ed anyway. |
And do you think you can predict every eventuality? I certainly don't. I don't want to try to predict every eventuality for scenarios involving the use of a firearm for self defense, either by myself or by the police/military.
Tuberski/KH,
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If the gun manufacturer had made the gun with the ability to unload it while safed, it wouldn't have gone off. |
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I don't understand why you would design one which could only be unloaded when the safety was off. |
Then you didn't read the article - that design feature was in place to correct a jamming problem. A jamming problem WOULD have been a defect in the design of the gun, and the defect was corrected.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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quote:
Accidents happen because people are idiots. |
Exactly. Hold the idiots responsible for their own idiocy. I would think a criminal negligence charge, at least, would be in order for the babysitter.
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Why the **** would you put something on the market which would increase the amount of time a gun would spend with its safety off? |
That's already explained - it corrected an ACTUAL defect in the gun.
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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quote:
Ther would have been a better way, this was just more "cost effective" It's not a fix for a defect. |
So? It certainly wasn't a dangerous fix for the defect - that is, if people would practice proper gun safety procedures and not point guns, whether LOADED OR UNLOADED, at anything they don't want to shoot. It's sorta common sense, like looking both ways before you cross the street, or being careful when you're jumping your friend's car.
And in any case, how do YOU know there was a better way?
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David Floyd
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The bottom of a large bottle of beer
Jan 1970
time: 05:34
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quote:
Gun manufacturer screws up the design. Gun manufacturer decides to fix the screwup in the cheapest manner possible which results in the fact that the gun is much less safe. |
The gun was not made any more or any less safe by the fix of the defect, nor did the fix create any additional defect (although, thankfully, y'all seem to concede that point to me at least). A gun isn't inherently dangerous - it's a piece of metal. It becomes dangerous when people behave dangerously.
quote:
By the way, the above is repeated all the time. Replace "gun" with "car". |
The two are not remotely similar, although I would also not agree with most torts involved in car crashed, at least, not with torts that result from someone being criminally negligent.
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10-08-2004 09:42
ACK!
Here Kid, look down the barrel of this gun while I try to unload it. Strange, unload the gun after hearing a suspicious sound but keep it loaded the rest of the time?
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