Victim Gets $9.5 Million in Accidental Shooting
A jury awarded $9.5 million Tuesday to a man left paralyzed in a New Year’s Day 1983 shooting by a man whose gun accidentally discharged after he burst into the victim’s South Gate motel room.
After a four-week trial in Los Angeles Superior Court, the jury found that the motel’s owners were negligent by allowing the manager and his friend--who was holding the weapon that misfired--to fire a submachine gun and a handgun on the property, said Browne Greene, attorney for the victim, who called the judgment the largest involving “premises liability” ever granted in California.
Ledesma lives in a convalescent hospital in Pico Rivera.
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