Kahr to pay $600K to Brady Center

[SecondsCount]

WASHINGTON, July 26 (UPI) -- U.S. gun maker Kahr Arms will pay nearly $600,000 to settle a lawsuit in a fatal shooting involving a gun a worker took from its factory, the Brady Center said.


The suit in Worcester Superior Court, which also was brought on behalf of Armando Maisonet, who was wounded in the shooting that killed Guzman, alleged the gun was taken by Kahr employee Mark Cronin, who was hired despite a record of drug addiction, alcohol abuse, theft and violence. The suit said Cronin stated he could take guns from the factory at will before they had serial numbers stamped on them, and that Worcester police Capt. Paul F. Campbell said Kahr's record keeping was so "shoddy" that weapons could be removed without detection.

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/Gun-maker-to-pay-Brady-Center-600000/UPI-73471311726336/#ixzz1TJgttUox

These cases are extremely frustrating. Can someone here give me a valid reason why Kahr should be held liable because I can't see one. :confused:

600K is a lot of cash. Makes you wonder why gun manufacturers are putting out less and less quality these days. The insurance has to be killing them.

[Tamara]

Read more: http://www.upi.com/Top_News/US/2011/07/26/Gun-maker-to-pay-Brady-Center-600000/UPI-73471311726336/#ixzz1TJgttUox

These cases are extremely frustrating. Can someone here give me a valid reason why Kahr should be held liable because I can't see one. :confused:

600K is a lot of cash. Makes you wonder why gun manufacturers are putting out less and less quality these days. The insurance has to be killing them.

The venue for the civil trial would have been in the darkest anti-gun heart of New England, with a jury that had been carefully tampe... er, "voir dired" to make certain that it contained nobody who was an NRA member or even owned a gun. Kahr would have been painted as a part of "Big Guns" (the new buzzword intended to sound like "Big Pharma" or "Big Tobacco", which is funny because GlaxoSmithKline or RJ Reynolds could buy Kahr and every other American gun manufacturer out of petty cash,) and they likely would have taken a stomping in the courtroom.

Even if Kahr had won, their legal bills would have been astronomical, and so they settled.

[TCinVA]

Just a guess, but perhaps because they hired a guy with a criminal record and didn't have proper control procedures for securing their weapons?

[Chuck Haggard]

How does paying an anti-gun lobby organization make their alleged transgressions OK?

I don't get the connection. If I beat up a suspect and get sued, I don't pay the ACLU, I pay the suspect and his ambulance chaser.

[ToddG]

Just a guess, but perhaps because they hired a guy with a criminal record and didn't have proper control procedures for securing their weapons?

This. And they're not paying Brady Center, they're paying the victim's family.

Without knowing the procedures used at Kahr, I'm in no position to judge whether their security measures were adequate. But when I worked at both Beretta and SIG, there were extremely strict protocols involved in bringing guns in and out of the buildings and everyone in the company was subjected to a criminal background check. I think I may have had to get drug tested for one or both, but it was too long ago and I cannot remember. You couldn't leave through any doorway in the whole building without passing through a metal detector and having your bags searched.

The linked article doesn't say whether Cronin was a convicted felon.

The only reason this is exciting is because Brady gets to pin it on a manufacturer. If your local security company hired someone with a criminal past and gave him access to a gun, and that person then used that gun to kill someone, you've got a prima facie negligence case.

[Tamara]

Granted that I'm giving Kahr the benefit of the doubt on the nature of the employee, even if he had somehow managed to fake his way past a background check and had got the gun out of the building by digging through the men's room wall with a teaspoon during his bathroom breaks, Kahr still would have been lucky if $600k is all it cost to get out of this.

(And here's a remarkable example of the Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect (http://paul.kedrosky.com/archives/2011/07/the-gell-mann-amnesia-effect.html) at work. How many of y'all excoriating Kahr for hiring an obvious felon and letting him walk out the door with guns in his lunchbox were laughing at the reporters prattling about "dum-dum bullets" two pages over? Why are their details suddenly all straight here? ;) )

[Mitchell, Esq.]

Kahr paid the stupid tax.

They paid it because they had lax product control and negligent hiring and supervision of employees.

They were in the wrong, and it cost them.

This means NOTHING to other manufacturers who apply sufficient safeguards to firearm controls and to hiring practices...other than to confirm that the expense of maintaining those controls was money well spent.

[SecondsCount]

Tamara- I also believe that they took the less costly route and understand the reason why.

I still believe that this is a slippery slope. If I leave a gun in my bedside stand, someone breaks into my house, takes it and uses in a crime- am I now liable because I didn't take enough measures to secure it? I can hear it now "Mr. SecondsCount, Why was your gun not locked in a safe made of unbreakable steel?"

Are the feds responsible for all of the firearms they misplaced over the years? How about the guns that were allowed to go over the border?

According to one report, Kahr did have metal detectors at the plant. However, they did not knowingly place a gun in the felons hands, nor did they load it, point it at someone, and pull the trigger.

[Tamara]

I still believe that this is a slippery slope. If I leave a gun in my bedside stand, someone breaks into my house, takes it and uses in a crime- am I now liable because I didn't take enough measures to secure it? I can hear it now "Mr. SecondsCount, Why was your gun not locked in a safe made of unbreakable steel?"

If you employed the burglar, invited him in, told him where the gun was, and gave him the combination to the safe, you might be found to bear some liability, especially if you knew he was a violent criminal.

[ToddG]

Actually, in many states you are liable if you provide easy firearms access to someone who shouldn't have access and then that person uses the gun criminally.

Let's also remember that Kahr settled -- a decision on their part -- regarding a civil suit. That is far different than the criminal proceeding for the guy who loaded the gun, pointed it, and pulled the trigger. Obviously, Kahr was convinced that it looked bad enough that $600k was easier to part with than a legal fight.

[Mitchell, Esq.]

I still believe that this is a slippery slope. If I leave a gun in my bedside stand, someone breaks into my house, takes it and uses in a crime- am I now liable because I didn't take enough measures to secure it? I can hear it now "Mr. SecondsCount, Why was your gun not locked in a safe made of unbreakable steel?"

Generally speaking, if you fail to secure a firearm knowing or having a reason to know an unauthorized person will have access to your weapon (your 16 yr old relative is staying at your house...he's not allowed to have access to your gun...) you would be liable for his getting access to your weapons.

If you do not know or have a reason to know that an unauthorized person will have access to your weapon, and someon breaks into your home and then steals your gun, you are probably not going to be liable.

Safe storage laws aren't to mandate you keep guns out of the hands of people who will commit a felony to obtain them - they generally focus on making sure you don't leave a pistol in a nightstand with kids milling about so one of them can take it.

Are the feds responsible for all of the firearms they misplaced over the years? How about the guns that were allowed to go over the border?

It would be a great lawsuit...

According to one report, Kahr did have metal detectors at the plant. However, they did not knowingly place a gun in the felons hands, nor did they load it, point it at someone, and pull the trigger.

No, but they did fuck up by letting a weapon get lost. Firearm manufacturing is a business in which you don't get an alibi when it comes to inventory control. Especially if you lost it to corporate negligence.



Responses in bold.

[Tamara]

Let's also remember that Kahr settled -- a decision on their part -- regarding a civil suit. That is far different than the criminal proceeding for the guy who loaded the gun, pointed it, and pulled the trigger. Obviously, Kahr was convinced that it looked bad enough that $600k was easier to part with than a legal fight.This is true, but my post was directed more generally. To wit: I never take a settlement as an actual admission of liability.

I'd like to think that the insurance company that settled with me after my motorcycle wreck did so because the driver working for the business they insured was clearly negligent, but part of me knows that other factors in the decision involved a swarthy foreigner with a name that had too many consonants running over a middle-class white chick in Atlanta, and there were actual x-rays with bones sticking out and wheelchairs and whatnot.

Whether the insurance company thought they had a chance of winning or not, it was probably cheaper to cut a check than chance a jury.

Settlements, in and of themselves, are no more an indication of actual guilt than plea bargains. They're both features of the modern American judicial system that make me uncomfortable (despite having been a personal beneficiary) but they are what they are.

[Mitchell, Esq.]

If the plaintiffs REALLY thought they could take the case to the jury and win, they would have...and walked away with a check with a few more zeros in it.

[SecondsCount]

Responses in bold.

And I appreciate the response. Still don't feel right about Kahr being robbed and having to pay $600K but I guess that is the way it goes.

[ToddG]

And I appreciate the response. Still don't feel right about Kahr being robbed and having to pay $600K but I guess that is the way it goes.

Hypothetical:

A government agency stupidly throws a vial of anthrax in the waste bin. That evening, the recovering heroin addict janitor finds the vial and thinks it's heroin. He goes outside to snort it and while doing so he sneezes and blows some of the anthrax onto your wife. She dies from anthrax inhalation.

Do you think the government is in any way responsible for her death? Would you be upset with the government or only at the thief?

[SecondsCount]

Hypothetical:

A government agency stupidly throws a vial of anthrax in the waste bin. That evening, the recovering heroin addict janitor finds the vial and thinks it's heroin. He goes outside to snort it and while doing so he sneezes and blows some of the anthrax onto your wife. She dies from anthrax inhalation.

Do you think the government is in any way responsible for her death? Would you be upset with the government or only at the thief?

I don't really see the comparison to what happened with the gun company to your story. Maybe something more equivalent to the Tylenol story years ago where someone put cyanide in the pills.

Should Tylenol be held liable for three people being killed because they didn't have the triple tamper seals on their product at that time?

Should an airline be accountable for the thousands of deaths on 9/11 because they didn't have a lockable door on the cockpit or onboard security?

Where do you draw the line?

Kahr took measures, whether or not it was enough is debatable. According to one article they had some security and while I am not sure if they did a background check, I would bet money that they wouldn't knowingly hire a felon. My experience with one firearms manufacturers showed that they had very little for security because I walked right into the back door during business hours without being detected. Doesn't make it any better but a gun is not a deadly substance that can be accidentally blown in to the air. Yes, anthrax and guns can both be deadly and should be kept under control of the good guys, but sometimes I think the gun companies are an easy target for political reasons.

[seabiscuit]

If I leave my loaded pistol around the house and someone I know has a criminal record and has abused drugs and alcohol picks it up and shoots someone, it's partially my fault. I need to take measures to secure my weapon. So does Kahr. If this guy had used C4 on the doors after using an EMP to knock out all the security cameras, we couldn't really blame Kahr. But if an alcoholic can simply walk out of the building with a firearm, we can blame Kahr.