Mother of robber sues store for allowing employee to carry a gun

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Yoda

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Mother of robber sues store for allowing employee to carry a gun...

Here's the link:
http://www.wibc.com/news/Story.aspx?ID=1741886

This could not happen in Florida. Part of the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida denies relatives the option of sueing, when the guy who defended himself is not convicted of any crime.

Just one more reason to avoid, deescalate, and escape whenever you can.

- - - Yoda
 
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But even if this incident happened in Florida, could the mother still sue Kroger? According how you presented Florida's SYG law, the mother couldn't sue the shooter, but that's not what she's trying to do in this case. She's suing the store for failing to enforce their store policy.

Not saying this isn't abhorrent behavior by the mother, I'm just picking nits.
 
Well, it's a "wrongful death" suit. I don't think she'll win simply because it was pretty open and shut legal, with obvious circumstances and countless witnesses. Good luck actually getting a judge or jury to believe it was wrongful.
 
I would think she'd have to prove that Kroger knew the employee had a gun. They can't 'prevent' him if they don't know. Of course, they could have a rule against it, but that doesn't prevent him from doing it.
This makes about as much sense as suing the police for 'allowing' her son to rob the store... sure there's a rule against it (we call it a law), but clearly it failed to prevent him from committing a violent felony.

Sounds like she's got a scheister lawyer convincing her to play the 'lawsuit lottery'. At least we can see where the young man learned his work ethic and sense of decency. :cuss: :banghead:
 
Kroger terminated Elliot over the incident. They enforced their policy when a violation came to their attention. Whether they offered him his job back after he was cleared of criminal wrongdoing or not is irrelevant. Next Case.


The plaintiff and her scum sucking ambulance chaser are probably hoping for an out of court settlement. I doubt this will make it past discovery with anything of a payoff.
 
It generally costs more to fight something like this than to settle out of court for some more reasonable sum. I am sure that is what this lady and her lawyer are trying for.

Why so? When all is said and done, and you have spent thousands defending yourself, even if the judge awwards you your legal expenses, which is not a given,,,the person that originated the suit will have no assests that you can sieze to pay your legal expenses.

I know, the person that sued us has such a poor case the judge threw it out, still almost cost us $10k to get it that far. The judge awarded us costs, but the other party had hidden all his assests and we would have spent $100k in court to get to the $10k.

As our lawyer said in our suit...no matter what, the lawers always get theirs first.
 
A civil case is not about who is right or wrong, it is about who can pay the biggest judgement. The lawyers are the real winners.
 
I predict this suit will be settled for its "nuisance value" unless Kroger wants to make a point.

I would guess the mother is being represented on a contingent fee basis, which means that she won't have to pay out of pocket if she loses, but her lawyer certainly isn't going to want to have to go in front of a jury with this case, because he'll be laughed out of court, which he's got to know. That means if he doesn't get a pre-trial settlement, he's really not going to want to go forward with the case. It's really just a question of whether Kroger wants to cough up the $$ to get it to that point.

My 2 cents
 
Posted by Yoda: This could not happen in Florida. Part of the "Stand Your Ground" law in Florida denies relatives the option of sueing, when the guy who defended himself is not convicted of any crime.
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The lack of a conviction does not invoke the civil protection provision of the law in Florida, not that that is relevant here.
 
Someone asked, so...

Elliot was fired by Kroger for having the gun while on duty and decided not to accept an offer to return to the store after he was cleared of criminal wrongdoing.
Click to expand...
 
When all is said and done, and you have spent thousands defending yourself, even if the judge awwards you your legal expenses, which is not a given,,,the person that originated the suit will have no assests that you can sieze to pay your legal expenses.
Click to expand...
In which case, you should be able to go after that person's lawyer since he's the one who filed the case anyway.

That would be a part of my "Tort Reform" law.
 
Tort reform is in reality a VERY simple thing. Just apply the same rules of evidence to civil proceedings that are required in criminal.

Prove your case to exclusion of any doubt........course that approach would dramatically reduce the amount of trial lawyers (substitute fleas), if that's any disadvantage.
 
By all means as one homicidal English tyrant once said, "the first thing we'll do is kill all the lawyers, (so we can rape, murder and pillage as we please)."

The lawyer is either a real idiot or genuinely believes he has some legal precedent and authority to stand on. Every state's laws and legal precedent/authority is different. There are scumbag lawyers who push nuisance suits, and then there are lawyers who really aren't lawyers that push suits for the publicity of it (neighborhood "urban" lawyers who use their law degrees and legal license to handle their hoods criminal clients pushing for plea deals).

"Urban" lawyers can make a good deal of money not really doing any work. For all we know the state this happened in allows for these kinds of lawsuits where a business fails to enforce its own policies, or is unable to enforce its policies till it learns of a violation.
 
SHR970 said:
Kroger terminated Elliot over the incident. They enforced their policy when a violation came to their attention. Whether they offered him his job back after he was cleared of criminal wrongdoing or not is irrelevant. Next Case.
Click to expand...
Ding!Ding!Ding! We have a winner. This is a huge factor in how this plays out. Kroger had a policy. Elliot violated it. When Kroger discovered it, it enforced said policy. Unless and until the Plaintiff can prove that Kroger either knew beforehand that Elliot carried while working or had some duty to search employees to ensure policy compliance, it's going to be very difficult to prove that Kroger was negligent.

That said, for the corporate client (Kroger), the issue of settlement will come down to one thing: How does the risk exposure stack up against the cost of defending. If the Plaintiff wants $50K to settle, and it will cost no less than $75K to defend, Kroger will likely settle. I'm not commenting on whether that's wrong or right, but that's the analysis that will happen.
 
She can "sue" because she doesn't like the way the store manager parts his hair ... WINNING a suit is a whole nuther pot of kimchee.
 
The lawyer is either a real idiot or genuinely believes he has some legal precedent and authority to stand on.

The third possibility is that the lawyer is a shyster looking to get a cut of a likely settlement. My bet is on this.
 
I agree with Nicky Santoro. When I had my business, we were sued twice by former employees for several different things. We made a decision to fight any lawsuit as a matter of principle, and each time when we replied to the original suit and started discovery, the opposing attorneys suddenly disappeared, quite mysteriously. Seems all they wanted was a fast settlement of some kind, not a courtroom full of spectators to see how shoddy their case was.

I hope Kroger makes the decision to fight this thing. If there were more decisions like that, a lot of the ridiculous suits wouldn't be filed. It was common knowledge among our employees that the company would fight lawsuits, and after the first two in a year, we had no more in over ten years.
 
Maybe I have a completely different question.
...the mother couldn't sue the shooter... She's suing the store..
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For the sake of a hypothetical, let's say the shooter received a state invoked protection of civil liability.

So the boy's mother sues Kroger instead.

Let's imagine that Kroger loses an expensive law suit. Could Kroger sue the former employee for doing something that resulted in huge loses on their part? Even with his state protection against civil liability? Because he violated employment policies and all?
 
CoRoMo, yes, they could. The damages arose from his violation of policy, not from the shooting death of a two-bit thug who took on a risk to life in his chosen "profession". In other words, if he had not violated policy, there would have been no related damages.
There are countless cases of municipalities or other governing bodies and their law enforcement agencies being sued because of the actions of LEOs that resulted in deaths or injuries, even when the actual actions of those personnel have been determined to have been justified, cases in which the individual LEOs involved are not named as defendants.
 
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