Publicola

The Valor Corp. is suing the widow who unsuccesfully attempted to sue them.

Unlike said widow however, Valor Corp. is only seeking attorneys' fees caused by the initial lawsuit, & not trying to sue the widow out of existance.

"Pam Grunow's attorney, Rebecca Larson, said the widow was worried about losing her house if she was forced by the court to reimburse the gun company. The estate has no assets, Larson said."

hmmm. Now I do feel sorry for the woman as her husband was murdered. But seeing as how she successfully sued the pawnshop that sold the gun the criminal used & the legal owner from which it was stolen (both for around $300,000 if I recall) & then tried to milk the Valor Corp. for tens of millions I don't feel much pity for her current plight. Especially since the murderer was a 13 year old boy who had stolen the gun in question from its legal owner.

I could be wrong, but I do believe that it wasn't the deceased's estate that filed the lawsuit against the Valor Corp. but the widow herself. So while it may be true that her late husbands' estate had no assets it may not be true of the widow, unless she's spent the money she recieved from previous lawsuits.

& this is also just speculation, but exactly how much is the widows' house worth? I would imagine there would be a lot of public sympathy for the widow if she was facing the possibility of selling her $65,000 house to pay a gun distibutors' attorney fees for a lawsuit that only failed on a mere technicality (i.e. the gun company did nothing wrong). But if she's living in a $2,300,000 house then I don't think her attemots at garnering sympathy would be as succesful. Alas, the reporter in question fails to provide anythin other than the attorney of the widows statement & a short, yet subtly biased account of the situation.

"A jury found Valor partially responsible for the teacher's death and awarded Pam Grunow and her two children $1.2 million, but Circuit Judge Jorge Labarga threw out the verdict. The lawsuit claimed the Saturday night special handgun sold by Valor was inherently defective and should be sold only with safety locks."

It failed to mention that the verdict was thrown out because the judge considered the jury's assessment flawed in that Valor could only be found at fault if they were 100% responsible for the widows late husbands' demise.

They mentioned the widows claim in the lawsuit, that the pistol in question was inherently defective & should only be sold with a safety lock, but fail to mention the Valor Corp.'s defense: the pistol functioned exactly as it was designed to function. It just happened to be used by person with evil intent after it had been stolen from its rightful owner.

Nor do they mention that safety locks render a pistol useless for self defense, or that when stolen a safety lock can be defeated if you have about 20 minutes & a hacksaw.

They fail to mention that storing a loaded gun with a safety lock creates an elevated danger of accidental discharge, or that unloading the gun before applying a lock negates any reason to lock the gun in the first place.

& they do not mention exactly what the alledged inherent flaw in the pistol is. Given the mindest they have I assume this simply means it worked as it was designed - a pull of the trigger will discharge the gun when loaded. More or less I believe they sued because the pistol could not decide on its own who did & did not deserve to be shot.

What would be ideal though is to also sue the widows' attorney(s). I'm not sure of the details but if they worked on the condition that they'd recieve 1/3 of any awards resulting from the trial, then they should pay 1/3 of the judgement against her in this case. Although I doubt Florida law allows for that. & possibly there's a good reason for it. (if ya'll think of one feel free to point it out.)

Thanks to Alphecca as I found the story over there.