Victims are going after richer third parties for damages
Wearing combat fatigues and toting a .22-cal. rifle, Robert Wickes, 24, stormed into a junior high school social-studies class in Brentwood, N.Y., one day last month and took 22 pupils hostage. By the time the subsequent confrontation ended nine hours later, Wickes, a recently fired substitute monitor, had critically wounded one student, nicked the school principal in the face and shot himself dead. Within a week, the Brentwood school district was under siege once again, this time by lawyers announcing they would file suits on behalf of some of the children held hostage. So far, the parents of five students are readying claims seeking $8.5 million in damages. Says Lawyer Frank Puglisi: "We're charging carelessness and negligence on the part of the school district in imposing this deranged teacher's aide upon students at the school."
The aftermath of the Brentwood tragedy follows a well-established and increasingly worrisome pattern in civil law: lawsuits aimed at wealthy or well-insured third parties rather than the people directly responsible for harmful acts. Says Professor Gary Schwartz of U.C.L.A.'s law school: "Robbers and muggers do not have liability insurance, and they do not have assets. The job of the lawyer is not simply to find the negligent party but the negligent solvent party." Russell Moran, editor of the New York Jury Verdict Reporter, puts it more bluntly: "A good lawyer will try to find anyone in gunshot range who has the ability to pay."
Delving into deep pockets traces back to common-law principles. But such third-party suits have recently proliferated in the U.S., partly because some new laws have encouraged them. For example, so-called dramshop statutes, which have become widespread in the past two decades, hold bar owners responsible in many cases for the actions of an intoxicated patron after he has left the premises. At the same time, liberalizing court decisions have made more and more institutions open to lawsuits for the conduct of others. Among the favorite targets: apartment-and office-building landlords, hotels, hospitals, schools, manufacturers and municipal transit systems.
The propensity to bring such suits has been spurred by news of large victories. The most famous case involved Singer Connie Francis, who was raped at a Howard Johnson's motel on Long Island, N.Y., in 1974. She charged that the motel-room lock was faulty; a jury awarded her $2.5 million in damages. Some recent decisions also involve whopping sums, and somewhat unlikely defendants. In California, a drunken driver plowed into the rear end of a station wagon parked on the shoulder of a freeway; the wagon had been left without lights by a police officer who was arresting its driver. The passengers riding with the drunk sued him and also the state, which had to ante up $2 million in damages. In 1978 a student from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology threw acid in the face of his former girlfriend at her New York City residence. She sued the building owner and its security firm as well as her assailant's school, charging that M.I.T. psychiatrists who had been counseling the youth should have warned her of the danger. The jury's verdict: a total of $10.3 million in damages from all three sources.