Criminal verdict in Mich. school shooting suggests parent vulnerability to civil negligence claims

2018 National School Walkout
Public domain via Rawpixel

The criminal conviction of gun-owning parent Jennifer Crumbley yesterday in the 2021 school shooting in Oxford, Mich., (e.g., USA Today via Courier Journal) got me thinking about parents' exposure to civil liability.

There's no question that parents of a minor-age school shooter can be held liable indirectly for injuries and deaths upon a theory such as negligent storage or entrustment of a firearm. There have been many civil lawsuits arising from school shootings upon analogous negligence theories leveled against school officials, police, gun sellers, and gun manufacturers.

What I do not know is whether there ever has been a civil verdict against a parent. A civil liability theory follows naturally upon a criminal conviction. But criminal prosecution of parents in these cases has been exceedingly rare, Crumbley's being the first such conviction.

Without the beyond-a-reasonable-doubt standard having been proved already in a criminal case, the civil negligence case presents daunting hurdles in duty and proximate causation. It's never easy to hold an earlier-in-time actor liable in negligence for the intentional criminal conduct of a later actor, whom judge and jury are likely to regard as a superseding cause. Such claims are not infrequent, though, and plaintiffs keep bringing them, because intentional criminal actors tend to lack assets that would make a plaintiff whole.

Brendan Pierson for Reuters reported a rundown in 2022 of civil actions in major school shootings: Uvalde, Texas; Columbine, Colo.; Red Lake, Minn.; Blacksburg, Va.; Newtown, Conn.; Parkland, Fla.; and Santa Fe, Texas. Claims that have been resolved so far have ended with settlements or defense verdicts.

Among those cases, Pierson mentioned claims against parents only in the report on the 2018 shooting in Santa Fe, Texas. In 2023, plaintiffs in the Santa Fe case settled with ammunition retailer Luckygunner (AP). The latest report I can find on the case against the parents, from the Daily News of Galveston County, Texas, said in December 2023 that the negligence case against the parents of Dimitrios Pagourtzis remains on the trial court docket.

Please comment here if you know of a civil verdict or settlement against parents in a school shooting case. I would be curious to know also whether homeowner insurers have covered or not covered in such cases.

Gunshots are the soundtrack of America

A shooting range features at Elvis's Graceland.
Adam Fagen via Flickr CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

'Tis the season for gunshots and sirens.

The last weekend in October, I spent the night at a Memphis hotel near the airport to catch a 5 a.m. flight homeward. I pulled up to the hotel on Elvis Presley Boulevard in the Whitehaven neighborhood to see people running and chaos at the restaurant across the street, Tha Table. Before long, police came streaming in, sirens blaring. A fire engine and an ambulance followed.

Two men were shot and killed. One was the owner of Tha Table; it looks like he came out into the parking lot to confront would-be car thieves, one of whom shot him with an automatic weapon. The other person killed was a bystander "in the wrong place at the wrong time," Fox 13 Memphis said, merely driving by with his three young children in the car on the way to a park.

A man arrested in the shooting, police say found with weapons including an AR-15 and a Glock with switch (converting the pistol into an automatic weapon), blames his companions for firing the fatal shots, Fox 13 reported.

When I left the hotel later that night, to go to a gym in West Memphis, I had to ask police to let me drive out and back under yellow tape that had cordoned off the block.

That shooting occurred as I arrived at the Red Roof Inn at about 3:30 p.m.  Just eight minutes later, two-and-a-half miles down the same road, a 15-year-old was shot at an Exxon station. According to WREG, he was selling water at the side of the road at the time. He was transported by a private car to the hospital and reported in critical condition.

When I came back from the gym, I fueled up at that Exxon, to return my rental car full the next morning. I didn't know about the second shooting until I got back to my room and checked the news about the first shooting.

About 60 hours later, a 19-year-old sitting in his car at a gas station in West Memphis was fatally shot multiple times by another customer, KARK reported. I was long gone, but that shooting took place 500 feet from the gym I had gone to, just around a corner. I learned of that third shooting when I checked the news to see if anyone had been arrested in the earlier two.

It happens that while I was in Memphis and Arkansas, I visited an old friend and mentor I had not seen in many years. He retired in recent years from work in Memphis and told me he wants to move away. He's tired, he said, of having to worry every day about being car-jacked.

I also visited my aunt and uncle at their home in south Little Rock. They've been renovating, and their place looks great, homey. They're very happy there, my uncle said, except only for the unwelcome ring of gunshots at night. Sometimes the shots ring so close to the house that they fear they're being targeted. My uncle, a Vietnam vet, lamented of the contemporary life of youth in the Little Rock neighborhood: "I'd rather be judged by twelve than carried by six."

When I boarded my plane home from Memphis, I overheard one flight attendant telling another that she's looking for a new apartment. She was working through the calculation of finding lower rent, but having to hear gunshots at night.

As I rejoined the world that Monday, I learned about the Lewiston, Maine, shootings, and that the suspect was found dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. He had killed 18 people and injured 13 just before I left home for Memphis. Ensconced as I was in my business away, I had not known the details. It was a kind of blessing, I figured, that I didn't know what was happening. While the suspect was at large, I did not know to worry about my wife in Rhode Island or a friend's son at university in Vermont.

I'm not a gun control advocate. I believe the Supreme Court got it right when it said that the Second Amendment protects an individual right to bear arms. I'm informed by the Second Amendment analysis of my constitutional law professor, William Van Alstyne. I believe that the Second Amendment anticipated the possibility that revolution might one day again be necessary.

At the same time, I don't want life cut short for me, my family, or my friends just because I drove to the park at the wrong time, or a stray bullet pierced the walls of my home. The price of the Second Amendment cannot be that gunshots and sirens are the soundtrack of American life.

Sorry, if you read this far thinking I'd have the answer; I don't. 

I want to be prepared to revolt when the time comes, because I think that corrupt politicians already have aggrandized an excess of power; that they now represent corporations, not constituents; and that the federal legislature has become perhaps irretrievably dysfunctional.

I also want the people I love to be safe against meaningless violence. I don't want to live in the Wild West of the movies.

I want my tres leches and to eat it too.

Malaysian court upholds civil liability for security firm after employee-bodyguard shot, killed own client

With attenuated liability theories arising from contemporary gun violence proliferating—in lawsuits against parents, schools, sellers, and government—a case of vicarious liability for gun violence in Malaysia caught my attention.

In October 2022, the Malaysian Federal Court affirmed a liability award to a shooting victim against the security firm that employed the shooter.

In 2016, businessman Ong Teik Kwong, whom police investigated for ties to organized crime but never charged, was in a car in George Town, Penang Island, Malaysia, when he got into an argument with his bodyguard, Ja'afar Halid. Halid shot and killed his client Ong, then proceeded to shoot seven other people, killing two.

One of the surviving shooting victims was the plaintiff in the instant case, Mohamad Amirul Amin Bin Mohamed Amir. A news videographer for Radio Televisyen Malaysia, Amirul was passing on a motorcycle and stopped to aid one of the victims. He told the courts that he did not know Halid was armed. Halid shot Amirul. Star TV News reported the lower court outcome in 2019.

Halid was tried, convicted and sentenced to death by hanging. I can find no subsequent report of whether or when execution occurred.

Amirul meanwhile won compensation against GMP Kaisar Security upon a theory of respondeat superior, or vicarious liability running through employment. The Malaysian legal system is a hybrid of colonial common law and customary and Islamic law. The law of obligations with regard to respondeat superior is substantially a product of British common law, and the key test for respondeat superior is the same: An employer may be held liable for the acts of an employee within the scope of employment.

My torts class and textbook introduce respondeat superior in the study of negligence, when many theories of vicarious liability become salient. It's important for students to learn, though, that respondeat superior is not a negligence doctrine. It operates irrespective of culpability.

That said, it's often difficult for plaintiffs to prove respondeat superior liability when an employee commits an intentional act, especially a criminal act of violence. Criminal violence is not usually part of someone's job, so the employee-perpetrator acts outside the scope of employment.

That's what makes the Malaysian case interesting. On the one hand, as a bodyguard, Halid had one of those rare jobs in which committing an act of violence, even a murder, might come within the scope of employment. On the other hand, Halid killed the very man he was supposed to protect.

Those facts suggest that the case would fail upon the usual analysis. But the lower and higher Malaysian courts focused on the carrying of a firearm rather than on the act of killing. In Malaysia, unlike the United States, there is no right to bear a firearm. Licenses are attainable, but the system is restrictive.

Federal Court Judge Harmindar Singh Dhaliwal reasoned:

Now, Jaafar's actions may have been unauthorized by his employer but the pertinent question to ask is whether Jaafar's actions in unlawfully discharging his firearm and causing injury to Amirul was so closely connected with his employment that it would be fair and just to hold the employer vicariously liable. On the facts of this case and for the reasons we have already stated, the answer must be yes. To put it in another way, Jaafar's wrongful act was not independent from the task he was employed to do.

Relying on a Canadian precedent, the court offered a further rationale that squares well with the scope of civil liability in American tort law.

The Supreme Court of Canada ... explain[ed] that vicarious liability is generally appropriately involved where there is a significant connection between the creation or enhancement of risk and the wrong that flows from the risk. The risk reasonably to be perceived defines the duty to be obeyed, and risk imports relation; it is a risk to another or to others within the range of apprehension.

The above-referenced cases arising from gun violence in the United States involve direct liability, not vicarious liability. They allege that the defendants were themselves negligent, and that their negligence proximately caused the later intentional shootings. The causal link is not easily proved.

Despite the distinction, there is a common concept animating the imposition of liability upon the attenuation of employment and upon the attenuation of causation. Scope of employment posits essentially that the pursuit of the employer's ends, if not the culpability of the employer, proximately resulted in the employee's injurious act.

All the same, the Malaysian Federal Court's conclusion would be difficult to reach on comparable facts in the United States. With gun possession a matter of license rather than right, it was easier for the Malaysian court than it would be for an American court to focus on the entrustment of the firearm rather than the use of it. As a matter of strict vicarious liability, rather than direct negligence, an American court would not be persuaded easily to effect the same shift in focus.

The case is GMP Kaisar Security v. Amirul, Civ. App. No. 02(f)-44-07-2021(P), [2023] 1 MLRA 99 (FCJ Oct. 18, 2022).

State AGs back Mexico in suit against gun makers

Houston gun show in 2007 (M&R Glasgow CC BY 2.0 via Flickr)

In a pattern that has become familiar, the mass shooting in Uvalde causes us to check in on the various irons in the fire on gun liabilities.

The from-right-field lawsuit that most piqued my interest in the last year was that filed by the government of Mexico against American gun manufacturers over deaths in Mexico, Estados Unidos Mexicanos v. Smith & Wesson Brands, Inc. (D. Mass. filed Aug. 4, 2021). In the culmination of a 139-page complaint, Mexico articulates causes including negligence, product liability, and nuisance.

The lawsuit is presently in briefing on defendants' motion to dismiss.

Especially interesting are Mexico's counts seven and eight, arising respectively under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act and the famously broad Massachusetts consumer protection law, chapter 93A. It was under the Connecticut law, as a claim over marketing, that courts allowed the Sandy Hook plaintiffs to work around the personal injury liability bar of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act of 2005 (PLCAA).

Though to be clear, Mexico's starting position is that the PLCAA doesn't apply anyway extraterritorially. In February, 14 state attorneys general, led by Massachusetts AG Maura Healey, briefed the district court on their agreement with that position (CNN), seeking to expose the gun-maker defendants to liability.

Gun maker Smith & Wesson, the named defendant in the case, was based in Springfield, Massachusetts, since 1852. In September 2021, Smith & Wesson announced plans to leave Massachusetts, amid pending legislation to limit the manufacture of assault weapons, for the friendlier venue of Tennessee (WCVB).

Family in fatal police shooting demands transparency

Fall River Police Department
Photo by Kenneth C. Zirkel (CC BY-SA 4.0)

At a rally in Fall River, Mass., on January 15, the family of Anthony Harden, who was killed by police in November, demanded transparency in the investigation into the shooting.

News reports state that Harden, 30, became involved in a physical altercation with two police officers trying to arrest him at his home.  Harden was confined to the home with a GPS bracelet while charges were pending in an assault case, WBZ reported in December.  According to police, Harden repeatedly stabbed at one of the officers with a metal object, possibly a steak knife, and the other officer shot and killed him.

Bristol County District Attorney (DA) Thomas M. Quinn III investigated and announced in December that police had complied with the department use-of-force policy, WBZ reported.  But the family has not yet seen the full record of the investigation, the Fall River Herald News reported after the "Justice for Anthony" rally on Saturday, and the family alleges inconsistencies between a private autopsy and the DA's conclusion.

In light of the police accountability movement that erupted in recent years in the United States, my Freedom of Information (FOI) Law seminar in the fall semester took up law enforcement transparency as a special topic.  Sifting the voluminous writing on police accountability in scholarly, NGO, and popular literature, I found, probably unsurprisingly, that lack of transparency is often a volatile fuel of misunderstanding and vehement distrust between people and police in these matters.  Worse, it doesn't always have to be.

At risk of generalizing to the detriment of the many, many police officers and departments that uphold the law with integrity, there remains the conventional wisdom that police are notorious for resistance to transparency.  My own youthful interest in FOI law was spurred by, and, in fact, a factor in my decision to go to law school in the 1990s was, frustration dealing with the Rockbridge County Sheriff's Office when I was a student journalist in Virginia.  

FOI "audits," occasionally carried out by media and NGOs to test state open records compliance, invariably test police, because a characteristic reluctance to comply with the law, ironically, juxtaposes so sharply with the urgent life and liberty interests of persons subject to police power.  The classic tension in this vein is nicely encapsulated by Amy Sherrill's report on police compliance for a 1999 Arkansas audit.  The piece might as well have been written yesterday; secrecy in policing is a persistent devil.

For my October class, besides some introductory material such as the law enforcement exemption in the federal FOI Act (FOIA) (subpart (b)(7)), after which the states have modeled many statutory open records exemptions, I assigned:

• State ex rel. Standifer v. City of Cleveland, 2021 Ohio 3100 (Ct. App. Sept. 3, 2021);
• Emanuel Powell, Unlawful Silence: St. Louis Families’ Fight for Records After the Killing of a Loved One by Police, 57 Am. Crim. L. Rev. 65 (2020); and
  
• Somebody: Police, The Intercept (Apr. 14, 2020) (podcast ep. 3).

There is so much to unpack on this topic that I had to be judicious.  The Standifer case, arising from an investigation into police violence in Connecticut, frames the subject with First Amendment access implications and the balance between police transparency and the rights of persons named in police records, including police officers themselves.

I can't say enough about the Powell article.  An attorney with ArchCity Defenders, Emanuel Powell related a personal and powerful narrative with a well informed and reasoned call for reform.

The entirety of The Intercept podcast, "Somebody" season, is worth the time.  For this class, I chose the "Police" episode, especially for its audio recordings of a mourning mother, Shapearl Wells, desperately seeking answers in the death of her son, and what she faces with police who are sometimes understanding but more often defensive, guarded, and harsh with her.  The audio medium demonstrates, in a way a cold transcript could not, the communicative disconnect between Wells and police, and the insult, however unintended, of unnecessary opacity upon an already tragic injury.  Somebody was a joint project of the Invisible Institute and comes with, especially useful for secondary school, a 10-unit teaching guide. 

There are some fascinating online clearinghouses on police data, such as NGO Mapping Police Violence and the Invisible Institute's Citizens Police Data Project, the latter focusing on Chicago, having begun as a collaboration with the University of Chicago.  The annual program of the National Freedom of Information Coalition (NFOIC) in fall 2021 featured informative sessions on police transparency reform and tracking police misconduct records (latter trailer only).  Tomorrow, I plan to attend virtually a plenary panel of the Communications Law Forum of the American Bar Association, "Racial Injustice Exposed on Camera: Police Transparency and Government Access in a Viral World."

I am open to persuasion on the basis of what I might not know about the investigation into Harden's death.  But on the face of it, I see no reason at this point for withholding investigative records, especially the autopsy.  Law enforcement authorities sometimes fear record release because it might compromise the public's position in seemingly inevitable litigation.  But discovery will bring the evidence to light anyway, and public entities shouldn't get to hold their cards tightly when accountability for lost life is at stake.

It's especially troubling that on the Bristol County DA website, there is, at the time of this writing, not a single mention of Anthony Harden.   The last two press releases from the office, before and after announcement of the conclusion in the Harden investigation, regard sentencing in other matters, touting the DA's success.  The 11-page report on the Harden matter, described by The Herald News, I cannot find online, not at the DA's site, nor from the State Police Detective Unit that conducted the investigation.

So one might understand how the Harden family, and families similarly situation around the country, might worry that the political heads of law enforcement are concerned more with reelection than with justice.  Transparency would not necessarily solve all ills, but it might diffuse tension and enhance public confidence by some measure.

News reports heroicize resistance to robbery, but storeowner's murder counsels common law wisdom

Mahaseth and his wife
(posted to Twitter by Sam Smink, WHDH 7 News)

A man was charged in early November for fatally shooting a Fall River, Mass., convenience store owner.

The murder of Stop N Save owner Lal Kishor Mahaseth in October shocked the Fall River community, near where I live in eastern Rhode Island.  But the circumstances that gave rise to it are all too familiar in Massachusetts south coast cities.

To help my Torts I class wrestle with the interrelated defenses of self, other, and property, I sometimes show a video of a local convenience store owner who fought back against would-be robbers.  When the viewer knows that no one was seriously hurt in the end, the video can be funny, while stirring serious conversation on matters such as tort doctrine, "stand your ground" laws, and the expectations of the social contract in the unique American culture of guns and personal responsibility.

Sadly and oddly, there are many videos from which to choose for this exercise, even limiting the search to nearby New Bedford, Mass.  My favorite video dates to 2012, when owner-operator Nicholas Dawoud turned the tables on assailants at the St. Elias Mini Market.  This story from WJAR has it all: robbery turned to personal threat; the frustrated defender, informed by past offenses, erupted; and other local customers joined the fray.

The tragedy in Fall River layers the problem with an added complexity.  Do news stories that glamorize defending locals incentivize a wrong choice?  Surveillance video in the Fall River case reportedly shows that 54-year-old Mahaseth resisted his armed assailants, at one point throwing a chair at them.  Does citizen frustration with failed policing in stressed economic times justify a different response to the problems of privileging defense?

Historic common law norms favor life over property in all circumstances.  The result is a familiar law school hypothetical with which students often struggle: the rightful owner of property has no privilege to commit personal attack to defend against threatened violence to dispossess, as long as the threat is merely contingent (albeit often unprovably so in real life) on the owner's refusal to surrender.  The theory is that no one will be hurt, and the wronged property owner can resort to assistance by proper authorities.

However, owing to the powerful American ethos of property and personal responsibility, the historic common law result is as likely to be excepted as applied, in practice.  The glamorization of physical defenses of property such as Dawoud's reinforces the incompatibility of the common law logic with many Americans' thinking.

Mahaseth, who was born in Nepal and earned a degree there in education, is survived by his wife and three children, The Herald News reported in October.  Prosecutors charged 37-year-old Nelson F. Coelho with murder, attempted armed and masked robbery, and carrying an illegal firearm, Mass Live reported in November.

[I acknowledge a kind note of Prof. Volokh, who aptly observes that non-deadly force in defense of property is permitted by common law.  I admittedly conflated defense by force at all, as I suggest, or fear, that the nuance is lost on the aggressor who responds violently, and potentially fatally.]

No duty: Court clears homeowner of liability in fatal shooting that sparked town ban on Airbnb

Not where the party was: historic Henfield House in Lynnfield, Mass.
(photo by John Phelan CC BY 3.0)

A homeowner is not liable in the shooting death of a party guest in a case that sparked a town ban on Airbnb, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruled on June 7.

A 33-year-old father of two, Keivan B. Heath was shot and killed at a house party in Lynnfield, in northeastern Massachusetts, in the early-morning Sunday hours of Memorial Day weekend in 2016.  The plaintiff in wrongful death sued party organizers and the homeowner, who had rented out the house.

According to the court opinion, drawing facts from the complaint with reasonable inferences in favor of the plaintiff, defendant Victor had "informed the [homeowner] that he planned to hold a college reunion party. However, he advertised a Saturday event on social media as the 'Splash Mansion Pool Party,' open to 'Special Invitation & Girls Only,' with three named disc jockeys to provide the music."  More than 100 persons attended.  

The property was the home of the Styller family.  The property comprised "a 5,000 square foot home, a three-car garage, a 2,000 square foot patio, an in-ground heated pool, and a pool house with a fireplace and a bar on a three-acre lot in Lynnfield."  Defendant Styller

rented out the premises for short periods of time using a variety of Internet platforms [including Airbnb and HomeAway (now Vrbo), according to Boston magazine]. During each rental, the [Styller family] would leave the property and stay elsewhere. In the listings, the defendant touted the property's secluded location, fenced-in yard, and electronically operated gates. He also described the property as being in one of the safest areas in Massachusetts. Renters used the house for, among other things, business retreats, conferences, "photo shoots," and reunions.

The court described the tragedy:

At approximately 3 a.m., police received two 911 calls reporting that someone at the party had been shot; one caller said that the decedent was "dying," and the other reported that people were attempting cardiopulmonary resuscitation and then said, "he's gone." Police arrived to find many vehicles leaving and people fleeing on foot. The decedent was lying alone, face up and unresponsive, near the pool. He was transported to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead in the emergency room. The cause of death was two gunshot wounds to the chest.

The murder remains unsolved.

Affirming dismissal in favor of Styller, the SJC opinion is a straightforward analysis of duty in negligence.  The duty of a property owner reasonably to maintain property in a safe condition does not extend generally to protect an injured from the "dangerous or unlawful acts" of third parties.

The plaintiff attempted to predicate liability on "special relationship" exceptions for foreseeable harms and for common-carrier defendants.  The court rejected both theories.  On foreseeability, courts have drawn exceptions in cases in which property owners knew of violent crimes on premises in the past.  But plaintiffs could not sustain the allegation here.  "Although the complaint cites a finding made by a Land Court judge in a related case that short-term rentals have 'significant external effects on the neighboring community and community at large,' it does not allege that short-term rentals are correlated with an increase in violent crime" (footnotes omitted).

Significantly for the short-term rental market, the court refused to analogize an Airbnb, Vrbo, etc., host to a common carrier or place of public accommodation, such as a transport provider, restaurant, or hotel, which would enhance the defendant's duty.  "This comparison missed the mark," the court wrote.

Aside from the fact that there is no allegation of any relationship between the defendant and the decedent other than the fact that the decedent was shot and killed on property owned by the defendant, perhaps the biggest difference between the relationship between a business establishment and its customers and the defendant's relationship to the decedent is that the defendant had no control over the premises during the rental period.

Styller's duty as a property owner stopped with the condition of the property at the time he turned over the keys.

In a related case decided the same day, the SJC ruled against Styller in a dispute in Land Court with the town of Lynnfield.

After the Heath murder, Lynnfield amended town law expressly to ban short-term property rentals, such as Airbnbs.  Lynnfield asserted that short-term rentals such as Styller's already violated the law.  But ordinances, such as a prohibition on operating a "lodging or rooming house," were ambiguous on the contemporary home rental question.

The SJC disagreed with the Land Court's ruling that the short-term rental of a whole home violated the law as to rooming houses, before amendment.  However, Styller wanted a ruling that his prior use was permissible, and the SJC would not go that far.  In the sum of various provisions, the court held, town law "clearly and unambiguously excluded, in pertinent part, purely transient uses of property in [a residential zoning district]."

Of interest from a procedural perspective, the court ruled on the zoning case despite alleged mootness arising from Styller's sale of the property.   "Unlike standing, 'mootness [is] a factor affecting [the court's] discretion, not its power,' to decide a case," the court explained.

[W]e view the viability of short-term rental use of property in the context of existing zoning regulations as one of public importance, in the sense that it raises "an important public question whose resolution will affect more persons than the parties to the case" and that "is primarily a matter of statutory [or, in this case, zoning bylaw] interpretation, not dependent on the facts of the particular case."

As well, Styller argued that the permissibility of the rental before the town amended the law remained a live issue in collateral matters of insurance coverage.

The wrongful death case is Heath-Latson v. Styller, No. SJC-12917 (June 7, 2021) (Justia).  The zoning case is Styller v. Zoning Board of Appeals, No. SJC-12901 (June 7, 2021) (Justia).  Chief Justice Kimberly S. Budd wrote both opinions for a unanimous court, excluding the two most recently appointed justices.