The jury handed down a verdict BUT
 

The saga continues. I'm looking at the Valor gun suit in Florida and the recent ruling. The jury determined the gun distributor, Valor, was 5% liable for the death of Barry Grunow. The actual firearms aspect of this case is irrelevant at this point, the request of the plaintiff's attorney seems be unreasonable if not illegal. These are some quotes from the Sun-Sentinal that make me wonder.

"The jury said 45 percent of the fault for Grunow's death lies with the school board for allowing Nathaniel Brazill onto campus that day and 50 percent with the family friend who kept the gun unlocked in a dresser drawer, where Brazill found it."

"After the verdict was read, plaintiffs attorney Bob Montgomery said he would ask the judge to order the gun distributor to pay the full $24 million."

Do we have any lawyers here? Can anyone help me understand this? On what grounds does the lawyer propose to overturn a jury verdict without going through the appeals process? Besides the fact that the defendant distributes evil firearms and we all know they deserve to be sued out of business, I can't see any logic to this. I thought a jury verdict was golden (except for IRS cases).

Is this request a "shot in the dark :) " or common practice? Are any of these legal manuvers ever successful? Yikes!

<a href="http://www.sun-sentinel.com/news/local/southflorida/sfl-1114grunowverdict,0,1280127.story?coll=sfla%2Dhome%2Dheadlines"> Take a look for yourself </a>

"Judge's Authority in Overriding Jury Verdict"

In addition to the Woodward nanny case, you might recall judges setting aside jury verdicts in other high profille cases such as the King boys' murder trial in Florida and the dog mauling murder trial in California.

You got me there ... I'm still tryting to understand how 0% of the responsibilty was found for the murderer ... yes, I'm not innocent of the world. I'm well aware that the shooter who stole the gun and shot the teacher doesn't have any money, where Valor and the School District do. I'm also aware that Handgun Control, Inc. (or whatever they are calling themselves this year) was looking for a high profile case and reportedly encouraged the widow to file the lawsuit.

But it still don't make no sense.

I'm fairly certain that civil juries simply recommend a verdict; the binding one comes from the judge. It is fairly common for a judge to reduce the verdict a jury hands down.

That seems to be true although the judge normally allows the verdict as found by the jury. This must be some legal safeguard of some kind. A safeguard from jury members that are honest or stupid enough not to be dismissed from jury duty.

I agree, I am looking onto some more deatials on this. The other question I have is what exactly keeps me from suing the baseball bat people after my brother klunked me in the head with one a couple of years ago.

Who knows, I might hit the lawsuit lottery with this one.

If you like this sort of head scratchin' you might enjoy www.overlawyered.com

A Judge appears to have understood that the only things defective in this lawsuit were the owner of the gun and the perptrator.

The decision against Valor Arms has been overturned.