No gun company policy and 30.06 sign

[HKUSP45C]

As with a lot of companies, insurance requires them to have it in the manuel.

THIS is something that I have a serious problem with. I hate the fact that companies think that a policy about weapons makes them less liable if something happens.

In my opinion, the company becomes MORE liable if they disarm a legally armed citizen. By disarming me and removing my ability to protect myself, they have taken on complete responsibility for my safety.

If I am at work and am not carrying because of the company policy and something happens and I am injured in a situation where I would have been able to defend myself... you can bet yer booties that I will be suing them for failing to protect me after they denied me my legal right to protect myself.

My company policy also prohibits weapons stored in cars - preventing me from carrying during my commute. If I were to obey this foolish requirement and have an incident occur during my commute - I would be suing them for denying me my right to defend myself during my commute.

If this happened a few times, employers would realize that banning all guns is not some miracle cure for lawsuits... and they might stop making these ridiculous policies.

I love this argument.

Your argument would only work if before ANY of this happened your employer purchased you outright from your lawful owner and then forced you to work for them. Since you would be company property at that point your employer would be responsible for you. Not until then though.

It doesn't take a shrewd legal mind to spot the fallacy in this argument. Since you aren't required by ANYONE to work for your employer you are therefore not required to show up on his property. \

Since your employer is not forcing you into a situation where you are disarmed they are not liable for you being disarmed.

You can't really expect to win a liability suit where you are showing up to a place voluntarily and are disarmed voluntarily.

Added to which just how do you think you'll prove that you having a gun would have made everything better and kept you from being injured?

Nope, sorry, when you signed up your employer told you exactly what you were getting into. You chose to accept the position with all of its blemishes and perks. You, alone, are solely responsible for you disarmed status.

[frankie_the_yankee]

I love this argument.

Your argument would only work if before ANY of this happened your employer purchased you outright from your lawful owner and then forced you to work for them. Since you would be company property at that point your employer would be responsible for you. Not until then though.

It doesn't take a shrewd legal mind to spot the fallacy in this argument. Since you aren't required by ANYONE to work for your employer you are therefore not required to show up on his property. \

Since your employer is not forcing you into a situation where you are disarmed they are not liable for you being disarmed.

You can't really expect to win a liability suit where you are showing up to a place voluntarily and are disarmed voluntarily.

Added to which just how do you think you'll prove that you having a gun would have made everything better and kept you from being injured?

Nope, sorry, when you signed up your employer told you exactly what you were getting into. You chose to accept the position with all of its blemishes and perks. You, alone, are solely responsible for you disarmed status.

If your argument were valid there would be no basis for harrassment and/or workplace safety laws. After all, if the workplace was unpleasant or unsafe, you could simply leave, right?

The law and the courts recognize that the workplace is different from, say, a grocery store. For most people, they HAVE to work, and in order to do that they need a job.

So I think that if a workplace forces you to be unarmed, and you come to harm as a result of it (whether you are shot by some rampage killer who invades the workplace or are accosted and robbed, injured or killed by a criminal on the way to or from), you have been damaged by the workplace rule in question. I think that a lawsuit under those circumstances would be very much in order.

The only reason we haven't seen one so far is because legal carry is still pretty rare. In TX, for instance, only about 2% of all adults have a CHL, and not all of them carry (or would carry) all the time. So if someone is accosted while going to or from a "no guns" workplace, there is only a small chance that they would have been carrying if there had been nothing to stop them. And rampage shootings are also very rare.

So I would say that the situation simply hasn't come up yet. I will be very interested to see what happens when it does, as it surely will someday.

[Renegade]

You can't really expect to win a liability suit where you are showing up to a place voluntarily and are disarmed voluntarily.

Sure you can. This is the United States, and logic will not dictate the results of a civil suit. Jurors will. And past civil awards show jurors are very sympathetic to a crime victim. Happens all the time.

[Renegade]

If your argument were valid there would be no basis for harrassment and/or workplace safety laws. After all, if the workplace was unpleasant or unsafe, you could simply leave, right?

Well said. Today's Headline:

A FEDERAL JURY HAS DECIDED THAT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN MUST PAY $11.6 MILLION IN DAMAGES TO FORMER KNICKS EXECUTIVE IN A SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWSUIT

She came to work voluntarily every day.

[Xander]

If your argument were valid there would be no basis for harrassment and/or workplace safety laws. After all, if the workplace was unpleasant or unsafe, you could simply leave, right?

That is not a valid comparison. There are laws that protect workers from harassment and certain (not all!) unsafe environments. A better example would be that nothing in the law, for instance, prevents a taxi cab company from sending a driver into a known bad part of town to pick up a fare. If you don't like driving into bad parts of town at night, your legal option is to quit, or refuse and be fired.

If you want a comparison for the potential recourse against a company for a policy that effects you negatively, make it the actions against companies for other matters of policy, not actions taken when laws were broken.

You certainly *can* sue to have policies rescinded, or when you've been injured because of a policy, but mudding the waters by attempting to compare these situations with situations where laws were broken only confuses the issue.

[Xander]

If your argument were valid there would be no basis for harrassment and/or workplace safety laws. After all, if the workplace was unpleasant or unsafe, you could simply leave, right?

Well said. Today's Headline:

A FEDERAL JURY HAS DECIDED THAT MADISON SQUARE GARDEN MUST PAY $11.6 MILLION IN DAMAGES TO FORMER KNICKS EXECUTIVE IN A SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWSUIT

She came to work voluntarily every day.

See my post above.

[Renegade]

See my post above.

Yes, I know there are laws. We are talking about the logic vs. reality.

[Xander]

See my post above.

Yes, I know there are laws. We are talking about the logic vs. reality.

No, we're now talking about apples vs. oranges. Policy enforcement is not equivalent to violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

[Renegade]

No, we're now talking about apples vs. oranges. Policy enforcement is not equivalent to violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

Never served on a jury that actually decides civil suits eh? Try it if selected sometime, you will be shocked what goes into deciding who gets what, how much and why. It is an eye-opener.

[DoubleJ]

See my post above.

Yes, I know there are laws. We are talking about the logic vs. reality.

No, we're now talking about apples vs. oranges. Policy enforcement is not equivalent to violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

I'd pick the oranges. tougher skin an' all...

[Xander]

Never served on a jury that actually decides civil suits eh? Try it if selected sometime, you will be shocked what goes into deciding who gets what, how much and why. It is an eye-opener.

It has nothing to do with what a jury might decide. The fact remains that there's a fundamental difference between a situation where an employer is breaking the law and it directly leads to injury, and a situation where an employer's legal policy may indirectly be associated with and blamed in principle for injury. Pointing at the former and claiming you'll get the same results given the latter and that they're really the same because injury occurred simply doesn't make sense.

[Renegade]

Never served on a jury that actually decides civil suits eh? Try it if selected sometime, you will be shocked what goes into deciding who gets what, how much and why. It is an eye-opener.

It has nothing to do with what a jury might decide.

It has everything to do with that, as that is what I commented on. The expectation of winning such a lawsuit, which goes RIGHT to what a jury might decide. Your statement was:

You can't really expect to win a liability suit where you are showing up to a place voluntarily and are disarmed voluntarily.

I disagree. I do think you can expect to win such a lawsuit. I KNOW of several cases where folks have won such lawsuits. In fact, I would be surprised if you could name any workplace shooting in the last 20 years or so where the unarmed victims did not received compensation in one form or another from the company.

Look at CHL shooting #1. Hale was no-billed when after he killed Tavai. He broke no laws of any kind. Yet he was sued to bankruptcy. Hence the Castle Doctrine.

If attorneys did not think they could win these types of cases, they would not file them and take them on contingency. Obviously they know something.

[KBCraig]

No, we're now talking about apples vs. oranges. Policy enforcement is not equivalent to violation of federal anti-discrimination law.

Never served on a jury that actually decides civil suits eh? Try it if selected sometime, you will be shocked what goes into deciding who gets what, how much and why. It is an eye-opener.

Been there, done that, tore my hair out.

It was a federal suit for medical malpractice. First vote was 10:2 against the doctor and 11:1 against the hospital. I finally got them to see that no matter how tragic the patient's pain and suffering, the doctor had nothing to do with the nurses failing to make checks on the patient, failing recognize a known complication, and failing to notify the doctor. Final vote cleared the doctor, but found the hospital liable. I was the foreman, and kept them from running rampant on the award. The patient was retired and disabled before the incident, so no lost earnings. We awarded past expenses and reasonably foreseeable expenses, amounting to about a quarter million dollars. The plaintiffs were satisfied, but their two (high priced) lawyers from Dallas quite visibly deflated when they heard what their take was going to be.

No offense, Chas.

[frankie_the_yankee]

That is not a valid comparison. There are laws that protect workers from harassment and certain (not all!) unsafe environments. A better example would be that nothing in the law, for instance, prevents a taxi cab company from sending a driver into a known bad part of town to pick up a fare. If you don't like driving into bad parts of town at night, your legal option is to quit, or refuse and be fired.

If you want a comparison for the potential recourse against a company for a policy that effects you negatively, make it the actions against companies for other matters of policy, not actions taken when laws were broken.

OK. How about this? Buy a ladder lately? Some guy steps on the paint can shelf, falls down, sues the ladder company for makng an "unsafe" product, and wins. So now ladders all have stickers on these shelves that say, "This is not a step".

The ladder company did not break any laws when they put the ladders on the market. No one forced the guy to buy one. And no one made him step on the paint can shelf. Yet he wins the suit anyway.

(Note: I don't know if a suit like this wa ever filed, but the ladder companies seem to be concerned enough about it to put these stickers, along with many, many others, on every ladder they sell.)

So somebody does something, within the law, and you get hurt as a result of it, and there is a potential tort action as a result.

Of course it matters how direct the connection is between the action and the harm. The defense could argue that even if you had a gun the BG accosting you at the ATM could have still hurt or killed you. I think the outcome of a suit would depend on the circumstances. Best case would be a guy with a CHL whacked by a rampage killer when he could very probably have protected himself and others had company policy allowed for him to be armed.

Just because it would be something new doesn't mean it isn't possible. New torts get created almost every day.

[Xander]

It has everything to do with that, as that is what I commented on. The expectation of winning such a lawsuit, which goes RIGHT to what a jury might decide. Your statement was:

You can't really expect to win a liability suit where you are showing up to a place voluntarily and are disarmed voluntarily.

First let's clear something up....I never said that.

I disagree. I do think you can expect to win such a lawsuit. I KNOW of several cases where folks have won such lawsuits.

I'm sure it has happened. I also know of a guy who won a lawsuit when he decided to try and trim his hedges with his lawnmower, intentionally defeated the safety features, and ended up chopping his hand off. The plural of anecdote isn't data, as the saying goes.

In fact, I would be surprised if you could name any workplace shooting in the last 20 years or so where the unarmed victims did not received compensation in one form or another from the company.

That's likely true, but it's also highly likely that few, if *any* of those individuals won compensation in court. It's far more likely that the potentially liable insurance companies settled with them. That's the nature of the system, and it doesn't prove much of anything.

If attorneys did not think they could win these types of cases, they would not file them and take them on contingency. Obviously they know something.

Typically, they know that it's less risk for an insurance company to settle, and that insurance companies like to avoid risk.

Could some of these folks win in court? Sure. I was never out to show that they couldn't. My only point in this whole long thread which I've only recently joined is that it's fallacy to attempt to use examples of liability in cases where laws are being broken to liability when everything is entirely legitimate. There are very different legal standards in play.


EDIT: I *did* have another point way earlier in the thread that I had forgotten about, but that was weeks ago and I'm tired of it and it's irrelevant to this particular discussion anyhoo.