Bryco/Jennings Lawsuit Update
A jury has awarded someone who dropped a gun “on a glass dining room” $6M because that’s what people not smart enough to get out of jury duty do:
Hardware paid $89.95 for a new Bryco/Jennings pistol that Bell said Richardson had bought “in bulk” a year earlier.
According to testimony, a few weeks after buying the gun a friend tried to fire the gun but it jammed. Hardware took the gun back to Richardson, who on that night was working at a liquor store he also owned.
Richardson tried but failed to move the pistol’s slide that was locked in place. He removed the magazine but there was a live round in the chamber and the gun was cocked.
Richardson returned the gun to a zipped case and told Hardware to bring it to the pawn shop the following Monday, when his “gun guy” would be at work and could look at it, according to testimony in the week-long trial.
Later that evening, Billy Bullard was shot in the stomach when Hardware dropped the gun as she was putting her purse and other items on the dining room table. Hardware and a friend rushed the teenage boy to the hospital but he died while his sister cradled him.
“One of points that impacted the jury was the owner, Mr. Richardson, testified that the gun he sold to 21-year-old Tiffany was one he would never recommend to one of his family member,” Bell said.
First of all, I make a lot of typos. But wow. That’s in a major newspaper. Second, this is kind of stupid. You bought a crappy gun. And, third, you dropped it.
November 19th, 2014 at 9:03 pm
Cheap gun with NEGLIGENT handling… Surprise!
November 19th, 2014 at 10:21 pm
I take offense to ‘not smart enough to get out of jury duty’ Anybody that actually cares about justice should take jury duty very seriously. Yes, it’s a PITA, but it’s important. Next time you get called up ask yourself, who do you want sitting on your jury?
It’s important, take the time.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:36 pm
I can either get jury duty or commit perjury. They ask me “can you not judge the law?”. DIID DIID.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:48 pm
“bought in bulk”…heh. Mid 90’s I sold a crap-ton of Bryco 58 380’s, buying them from Banger’s Wholesale by the case, choice of blue or nickel (okay, flat-black spray paint or crappy chrome), $60 cost, $90 retail.
Anyway, the Bryco (don’t think they had joined with Jennings yet at that time, not sure) took the cheapo crown away from fellow ring-of-fire death merchant Lorcin. Why? No, not for failures; I had sold a shitload of L380’s before with very few returns, for that matter the Bryco’s pretty much went bang as designed too as long as you fed it balls.
It was the magazines (2 HIGH-CAPACITY CLIPS INCLUDED!). The Lorcin was a straight stack 8 round while the Bryco used 14 round double stacks. Never mind that it had the dimensions and ergonomics of a brick, it was HI-CAP! Of course .gov gave about two years notice of the impending “ban” which Bryco stamping plants put to full use cranking out a gazillion pre-ban mags which they could sell with impunity as long as they were produced before the cutoff date. Government creates a demand and marketing opportunity where none existed before, and makers took full advantage. Brilliant! And actually people who would normally never have bought a cheap gun or maybe any gun at all bought them because gov had said they would soon not be able to get them, and they could get two mags plus a gun for the market price of a preban Glock mag. The law of unintended consequences at work, gov is masterful at that.
In this case the dealer might have sold the wrong gun to the wrong person, but hey, free enterprise. Only not, because the teevee and the yellow pages are chock-full of sleazeball lawyers who just love them some too-dumb-to-get-out-of-it jurors. And that right there more than anything else, even more than the hassles from .gov, is why I am no longer, and never will be again, an FFL.
November 19th, 2014 at 10:54 pm
And for Bruce above, can you imagine being on this particular jury in deliberations? They’d probably have to be picking a jury for me next, for homicide. But maybe I could find a sleazeball lawyer to prove I had been driven insane by the stupid. 🙂
November 19th, 2014 at 11:22 pm
Of all the cheap pocket pistols out there I prefer the Raven or the Titian. Both seem to work very well.
As for the gun sold, it is obvious the owners had no clue that to have a malfunctioning gun, loaded and COCKED,in one’s purse, is a very dangerous thing to do.
Sad a kid died as a result.
November 19th, 2014 at 11:58 pm
> I can either get jury duty or commit perjury. They ask me “can you not judge the law?”. DIID DIID.
Can I? Sure. Will I? Nope.
November 20th, 2014 at 9:33 am
I’m still dealing with the idea of some dude being named “Hardware”.
November 20th, 2014 at 11:10 am
I would bet good money that gun didn’t go off because it was dropped. I’d wager someone was intentionally pulling that trigger without thinking of where the gun was pointing.
Or perhaps they were.
November 20th, 2014 at 2:54 pm
I’ve owned a J-22, and actually thought it was a fine pistol for its price, but that was before the Bryco acquisition.
(It was a little picky about “normal” ammo but would eat CCI Stingers all day.)
I also liked the Phoenix I had for a while.
Cheap doesn’t mean “terrible”.
November 20th, 2014 at 5:24 pm
On the main topic, though, “it was a crappy gun” as an excuse for “it went off when dropped” is …
Exactly what will get a jury to find the manufacturer liable for injury via defect in design or manufacturing; no modern firearm should fire when merely dropped.
I’m a lot less sanguine about finding the pawn shop owner at all liable, but “handing her back a loaded, broken gun in a bag” is deeply stupid in itself, rather than just keeping it until the gunsmith could see it, so I could see that as a negligence and “WTF were you thinking?” cause of liability.