(Associated
Press)
MILWAUKEE – Jurors ordered a Wisconsin gun store to pay nearly $6 million
on Tuesday to two Milwaukee police officers who were shot and seriously wounded
by a gun purchased at the store.
The
ruling came in a negligence lawsuit filed by the officers against Badger Guns,
a shop in suburban Milwaukee that authorities have linked to hundreds of
firearms found at crime scenes. The lawsuit alleges the shop ignored several
warning signs that the gun used to shoot the officers was being sold to a
"straw buyer," or someone who was buying the gun for someone who
couldn't legally do so.
Jurors
sided with the officers, ruling that the store was negligent in selling the
gun. Officer Bryan Norberg and retired Officer Graham Kunisch were both shot in
the face after they stopped Julius Burton for riding his bike on the sidewalk
in the summer of 2009. Surveillance video shows that the officers scuffled with
Burton and slammed him into a wall before he shot both officers.
Investigators
said Burton got the weapon a month before the confrontation, after giving $40
to another man, Jacob Collins, to make the purchase at the store in West
Milwaukee.
One
bullet shattered eight of Norberg's teeth, blew through his cheek and lodged
into his shoulder. He remains on the force but said his wounds have made his
work difficult. Kunisch was shot several times, resulting in him losing an eye
and part of the frontal lobe of his brain. He said the wounds forced him to
retire.
Jurors
ordered the store to pay Norberg $1.5 million and Kunisch $3.6 million, in
addition to $730,000 in punitive damages.
The
officers' lawyer, Patrick Dunphy, said Tuesday that he expected years of
appeals in the case. Defense attorneys declined to comment.
The
issue of liability gained attention in the U.S. presidential campaign when
Democratic front-runner Hillary Rodham Clinton recently said she would push for
a repeal of the George W. Bush-era gun law that Badger Guns' lawyers said
shielded the store from liability claims.
The
gun shop's attorneys denied wrongdoing and said the owner, Adam Allan, couldn't
be held financially responsible for crimes connected to a weapon sold at his
shop. Badger Guns, previously known as Badger Outdoors, has since closed and
been replaced by a gun shop called Brew City Shooters Supply. All three
entities have been run by Allan family members.
Authorities
have said more than 500 firearms recovered from crime scenes had been traced
back to Badger Guns and Badger Outdoors, making it the "No. 1 crime gun
dealer in America," according to a 2005 charging document from an
unrelated case. A former federal agent has also said the shop had failed to
take necessary precautions to prevent straw purchases.
Norberg
and Kunisch cited those details in their lawsuit, saying they showed a history
of negligence.
Burton
pleaded guilty to two counts of first-degree attempted intentional homicide and
is serving an 80-year sentence. Collins, the man who purchased the gun, got a
two-year sentence after pleading guilty to making a straw purchase for an
underage buyer.
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2015/10/14/wisconsin-gun-shop-ordered-to-pay-millions-to-injured-police-officers/
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