Arts & Ammo

Assigning Blame

Rolando Domingo Montez, 19, was mercilessly strangled by a telephone cord. Overlawyered recounts the tragic tale. The jail in which he was being held failed to keep adequate watch over the lethal device, although any fool could see that it might strangle someone if provoked. And Montez apparently provoked it sufficiently by using the telephone to call his mother to come get him out of jail. Shortly thereafter, he was dead. Pity Montez.

The fact that Montez undisputedly committed suicide with the telephone cord would not deter the plaintiff’s bar from seeking justice in this case. Montez’s mother sued the taxpayers and JWC Electronics, manufacturer of the telephone. In South Texas, such suits have a history of success, and indeed the jury assigned responsibility 60% to Montez, 25% to the taxpayers, and 15% to JWC.

For those who care about Texas law, because Montez was more than 50% responsible, the plaintiff cannot collect damages from the others. A court of appeals, however, was willing to overlook that technicality by finding that JWC was not liable for a tort but for breach of an implied warranty. (Manufacturers, you see, apparently give implied warranties that you will not use their product to kill yourself.) The Texas Supreme Court didn’t buy that argument and JWC got off the hook.

For those who care about living in a sane society, you should consider it progress that the jury assigned a whopping 60% responsibility to the person who conceived and executed the suicide. This is progress in a world where the New York Port Authority is assigned 68% of the blame for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, relegating the terrorists themselves to bit players.

July 2nd, 2008 Posted by Fitzroy | Law | no comments