Suicide Costs Gun Store $175,000 : Parents of Woman Who Bought Weapon Get Payment

A Northridge gun shop has paid $175,000 to the parents of a mentally troubled young woman who shot herself to death after buying a gun from the store--a transaction that the parents said they had begged the gun shop not to complete.

The out-of-court settlement resolves a 1983 lawsuit that was regarded as a novel attempt to hold the shop liable for knowingly aiding in a suicide.

In agreeing to the settlement, National Gun Sales Inc. acknowledged no liability. But an attorney for the parents, Stena and Joseph Katona of North Hollywood, said Thursday that the size of the settlement is “tantamount to an admission of liability.”

“We certainly feel they (the gun shop) would not have paid that amount of money unless there was a reasonable possibility we would have been successful at trial,” attorney Gloria Allred said. “This is certainly going to send a message to gun shops that they have a duty to exercise caution in the sale of a deadly weapon.”

In their $2-million lawsuit, the Katonas charged that despite their telephone call pleading with the gun shop not to do business with their daughter, Tara Ann Katona, 22, the store sold her a Colt .38-caliber Special.

The next day, the daughter, who had spent much of 1983 in and out of mental institutions, killed herself.

Stena Katona, the mother of four other children, said she was “happy” with the settlement because it will encourage gun dealers to “ask more questions. I think it’s going to open up their eyes. This never should have happened.”

According to the lawsuit and statements made by her parents in interviews, Tara Ann Katona was diagnosed as a manic depressive while a teen-ager and began suffering from deep depressions when she ceased taking antidepressants in 1983.

That July she made a down payment to the Northridge gun shop to purchase the pistol. The next month she went to her boyfriend’s house, located his gun, put it to her head and pulled the trigger. The gun was not loaded.

Shortly thereafter she was placed in Camarillo State Hospital. A month later, on Sept. 13, the day before she was scheduled to be released from the institution, her parents said, they learned from a hospital counselor that their daughter had made the down payment on the gun.

Stena Katona said she called an employee of the gun shop and told him that her daughter had tried to kill herself, was about to be released from Camarillo and was still talking about suicide. She said the employee assured her that the transaction would not be completed.

The next day, the daughter was released from the hospital. A day after that, the suit claimed, she purchased the gun. And a day later, Sept. 16, she was found dead by a roommate.

The gun shop’s attorney, Terry L. Sorensen, said the settlement was “certainly not extravagant” and said the decision to pay it involved economic considerations such as the cost of proving the defense’s case. The suit was scheduled to go to trial in Los Angeles Superior Court next month.

Kent DeChambeau, legislative advocate for the California Rifle and Pistol Assn., said he was not familiar with the case but thought it would not affect debate on the issue of regulating firearm sales.

However, he said the Katona case will help illustrate that “there is a real failure on the part of most sellers of any kind of product to recognize they do have a liability.”

In filing the lawsuit, Allred said it was the first suit in the United States to attempt to impose a civil liability on a gun shop for selling a gun when personnel knew that the purchaser was likely to use the gun to commit suicide.

The maneuver was akin to “dram shop” cases of the early 1980s in which the California Supreme Court ruled that bartenders who serve drinks to an intoxicated patron can be held liable if that person causes a traffic accident while drunk. A bill passed by the Legislature changed state law to rescind that ruling.

The suit also accused the gun shop of violating a state Welfare and Institutions Code section banning sale of any “deadly weapon” to a mental patient in a hospital or on leave of absence, although the issue of whether Tara Ann Katona was on leave from Camarillo or had been fully released was not clear.

State law requires that when a handgun is purchased, the buyer must fill out a form that asks whether he or she has ever been convicted of a felony, has been addicted to narcotics, is a mental patient or has been determined by a court to be a danger to others as a result of mental illness. The gun sale is then suspended for 15 days while the state Department of Justice’s Bureau of Criminal Identification conducts a background check.

Both Allred and Sorensen said the National Rifle Assn., which represents the interests of firearms owners and dealers, had no involvement in the case. Allred had suggested at the time the suit was filed that the NRA should support her case as a gesture toward responsibility in weapons sales. The fact that its officials did not proves that “all they really are are extremists,” she said.

The Katonas also sued the city and county of Los Angeles and the state, but a court held that those jurisdictions were immune, Allred said.