Trayvon Martin.

Not....really....

Tort liability, as far as insurance goes, is picking up someone else's liability in the absence of a contract that specifically assigns it. KirStang, I know the answer is much, much more complicated like that, but there's a very clear definition of tort liability in the standard ISO General Liability policy form (which is almost certainly the governing coverage here).

So, for what you're talking about, Tully Mars, you're right, but the term you were taught is wrong. If you were acting within the scope of your training and regulations, you would be covered by insurance because you were defined as an employee acting within their duties (similar but not identical to Zimmerman as a volunteer). Tort liability is something similar but not really important in this set of circumstances since the policy later explicitly states that they cover volunteer workers as well.

Now that I think about it, KirStang, if Zimmerman were protected by the statute you cited, then he would have been immune from criminal prosecution as well as civil. He clearly wasn't, so I'm not sure that he's as protected from a civil suit as you may think. Clearly the state wasn't bothered by that statute and his defense attorneys were not successful in using it to get the charges dismissed. Since there's now a precedence that it does not apply to his actions that night, I would have to guess that it would have to be upheld in civil court, too. But there's probably a very simple reason why not that I'm missing.

 

Well I'm not surprise we were taught some term incorrectly. I do remember one trainer constantly running around yelling (ok, maybe not yelling) "remember you're covered by tort only if you act within blah, blah, blah." One day she got in to a disagreement with a new hire who'd completed several courses on his way to a law degree but ran out of funds for school. She insisted the legal term "decus tecum" or maybe it's "duces tecum?" only referred to written evidence, such a notes and files. His position was it could include any evidence the court summoned you to to bring. I remember her getting really worked up and red in the face "you're not a lawyer, right? Right, you're not a lawyer!" To which I thought "well neither is she, so?" Some one told me they looked it up and he was correct. I really don't know even now what it means, though I have been handed subpoenas with that term on them. To me it always meant "bring your records" but my records simply by their nature would not include lab work, tests or other evidence. Would have fallen under the favorite government employee category of "not my job, man."
--- merged: Jul 14, 2013 at 2:55 PM ---

Can a case set it's own precedence?

 

George Zimmerman is not the hero gun folks are looking for.

 

"Clearly" is a little too strong. Cops, prosecutors, and the like did not press charges initially because he was, in fact, protected under the statute. They only relented under tremendous political pressure by a (arguably very corrupt) prosecutor. Furthermore, the immunity does not hinge on whether or not he went with a SYG hearing or not. 776.012 covers self defense, and 776.013 is the 'SYG' law.

Since we are certain that Zimmerman was 'Justified' under general self-defense as codified under 776.012, we can then infer civil immunity as 776.032 specifically includes that statute.

Moreover, the jury instructions used language identical to the wording used in the SYG statute:

So I'm fairly certain that even if he waived his pre-trial SYG hearing, SYG was still very much dispositive law in this case. It'll be tough to argue that neither SYG nor the general self-defense statute were at play here.
Finally, a trial case provides extremely minimal precedential value, especially since it went to a jury. A high profile case is nary binding precedent.

 

Exactly this.

My mom sees him doing this again in another 15 years d/t bad temper. Maybe, maybe not. That is something you can grow out of or learn to control.

 

The lead investigator wanted him charged with manslaughter. So I don't think you can state the cops didn't charge him because he was covered by the statue.

 

Shrug. Fact remains, he wasn't charged at the outset--at least not until the media got a hold of it.

 

Oh, no doubt public pressure and the media pushed this thing. Hell they're yelling now to charge him with a civil rights vio. with the DOJ, don't see that going anywhere but I guess it could.

 

Right? It's funny how certain things are God-given rights and absolute justice when a white guy (or someone who looks and acts like a white guy) does them, but when a black guy-- or, God help us, a black woman-- does them...it's just more crime, and what can you expect from "those types of people?"

I don't recall seeing any conservative pundits noting that Melissa Alexander's rights to self-protection and to "stand her ground" were trampled on when she got 20 years for firing warning shots in her own damn house against her own damn abusive estranged husband who was violating his fucking restraining order by being there. Maybe if she'd been pregnant and he'd been threatening her fetus they might have cared.

What shocks me isn't how much unjust bullshit this all is-- both her and Zimmerman's verdict-- but how shocked so many other people are about the injustice of it all. Where the fuck have these people been? A white guy shoots a black guy in the South and gets off scot free, and we're shocked? A black woman tries to defend herself and gets monumentally fucked by the system instead, and we're shocked? What rock do these people live under? This is all part of the same American spectrum of social politics that consistently screws women on everything from ob/gyn care to pay equivalence, screws kids of color on education, and screws everyone except rich white guys when it comes to how the law gets applied in police stations, in public defender/prosecutor offices, in courtrooms, and in the media. How is anyone still shocked?

 

Honestly I haven't read a lot about the facts of her case so unless I do I don't really feel comfortable making statement about whether SYG applies to her. In fact I'm not all that up on Florida laws at all so I have no idea what would apply or what would not. I was mainly speaking that it seemed like a case where she was over looked and got zip support from groups that would support the use of a firearm in prevention of a crime. Much in the same way a little blonde girls goes missing and it's on Nancy "Media Whore" Grace every fucking night and the 1,500 brown girls that go missing everyday get zip airtime.

And Zimmerman's not exactly white, the guys Hispanic. Doesn't mean it's wasn't a race issue the Hispanics I live around often make no secret they do not care for black people.

For me they are too many unknown in this case, least unknown to me. But then I made it a point not to watch much of it. Once I read the dispatcher instructed him "we don't need you to do that" when he said he was going to follow the kid I thought he should have got back in his truck. Everything that happened after that was completely avoidable, not to mention really stupid of Zimmerman in my opinion. But my opinion doesn't equal legal or illegal so I'll just have to accept the jury verdict.

 

Just to clarify: white people can be Hispanic.

 

I guess my point is Zimmerman wouldn't likely be welcome at the local Klan meeting.

 

Sure, although I think that a lot of Northerners and foreigners think that "Hispanic" in the South is the "next worst thing to being black," but the truth is that as often as not, it's perceived (by those who perceive things in such ways) as "the next best thing to being white," especially in reference to middle- and upper-class Latinos not themselves immigrants, with less dark a skin color. I think it also doesn't hurt Zimmerman that he doesn't have a Spanish name and doesn't look, sound, or act like a barrio Latino. If he were a little browner, spoke with a thick accent, and was named Jesus Vasquez, he'd be in the clink right now, the case would've been open and shut, and nobody would've heard a thing about it.

 

Well I certainly fall into that "northerner cat." and I have no inside knowledge of the racial ranking of the south so I guess you could be right.

 

I'm also a Northerner, I just have read a lot of stuff by Southern people of color, and I have a couple of friends from the South who happen to be people of color, and they've told some pretty hair-raising stories about growing up there....

 

Because Ms. Alexander violated literally every single rule of defensive shooting.

She left the scene of the confrontation with her husband (inside the house) and went out to her car in the garage. She left her child in the house with said (known) violent jackass. From her car, she retrieved her firearm. She then re-entered the house and fired her "warning shot" into a wall, on the far side of which was her child. Bullet go through walls. I can't stress this bit enough- she fired a bullet into a wall, beyond which was her child. This alone is the kind of negligence that deserves significant sanction. In some states, that alone is a crime- "reckless discharge" or the local flavour thereof.

She may have gone back into the home with the intent to protect her daughter- I've no doubt in my mind that was her motive, in fact. However, her absolutely stupendous negligence in firing her weapon in such a way partly negates this in my mind, and certainly would have in the eyes of the Prosecutor. "You say you went back to protect your child, but then you fired a bullet into the wall of the room where he/she was! How concerned could you have been for their safety if you shot at them? This was not an attempt to protect them, this was a hot-blooded gesture intended to intimidate your husband!" That would be their most likely line of argument on that point.

Secondarily, warning shots are a bigtime nono. No shooting school or trainer, no Police Academy, teacher warning shots. Why? First off because a "warning shot" is an intentional miss. One doesn't train to miss. Secondarily, because the use of a lethal weapon- any lethal weapon, not just a firearm- is lawful only if it passes the "Reasonable Person Test:" that is, that Joe or Jane Sixpack, in the same circumstances, would have good reason to believe that they were in imminent danger of either;
1: Death
2: Severe injury
3: Rape or sexual assault.

This would be why Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted- because most people realize that having one's brains bashed out on a concrete sidewalk has a tendency to shorten one's lifespan rather drastically.

The prevailing legal thinking, what guides courts and investigators, is that if you -are- in such imminent danger, you draw and use your weapon in such a way as to physically stop the confrontation. If the Bad Guy sees the gun and runs away without a shot fired (as happens 75-plus-percent of the time), great. If not, you shoot for center-of-mass; ie the chest. If the situation isn't serious enough for you to be putting rounds into his heart/lungs/spine, it's not serious enough to draw the gun. This is also one of the two reasons that nobody (apart from the French GIGN, who are both incredibly skilled and extremely unorthodox) teach "limb shots." Period. Ms. Alexander violated this rule. If she was afraid for her life or safety, or that of her child (as I believe she had reason to be) she should have put rounds into her husband's Boiler Room and done the Human species a favour. World's better off without wife-beating shitsacks suckin' my air, and she'd have gotten off clean. "Warning shots" are- from a legal standpoint- an act of intimidation, not the desperate last-ditch measure that drawing and using a lethal weapon is- legally- supposed to be. Unfortunately for Ms. Alexander, she succeeded in "snatching defeat from the jaws of victory." She shoulda just shot the sonofabitch. Trust me, her case will be a fixture in use-of-force classes and CCW certification courses for a long, long time- "this is what you don't do."

 

20 years vs. going free.

The Dunedan, I read what you are writing and still don't see where the 20 years comes from.

 

Unfortunately, she turned down a plea offer for 3yrs. She took her case to trial and lost under Florida's ridiculously hidebound "Mandatory Minimum" set of laws- the same bullshit that sees people locked up for double-digit stretches for a joint. Unfortunately, when she was found guilty of Felony Assault (she "assaulted" her estranged husband when she made the "intimidatory gesture" of firing her "warning shot"), her sentence was mandatorily enhanced because she used a firearm in the course of the "assault."

Regular Felony Assault (under FL Law): 10yrs.
Felony Assault w/Firearm: 20yrs.

Shoulda just shot the fucker.

 

More foolish, high-handed talk from a regular civ.