ANAHEIM : $519,090 Award in Man’s Beating Death

A jury has awarded $519,090 to the widow of a man who died after he was hit with a baseball bat outside an Anaheim bar.

After a one-week trial in Westminster Superior Court, jurors found Wednesday that the owner of Harvey’s Bar and Grill in Anaheim should pay the money to Rhonda Rushing for the Aug. 19, 1985, attack on her husband, Michael Rushing, 28. The cement mason and contractor from Placentia, a father of two children, died seven days later.

Douglas C. Sohn, attorney for the widow, said jurors assessed a total of $665,500 against the firm that owned the bar, Godfather’s Services Inc., but that award will be pared down to $519,090 because the panel found Rushing was 22% responsible for the confrontation that killed him.

James T. Duffy, the Riverside County carpenter who hit Rushing in the head with a bat, pleaded guilty to voluntary manslaughter and was put on probation for five years, Sohn said. Duffy was dropped as a defendant in the civil case because he was deemed unable to pay any judgment against him, Sohn said.

Testifying during the civil trial, Duffy testified that he was attacked first, Sohn said. But another man testified that he was standing in the parking lot talking to Rushing when Duffy came at them both, swinging a bat.

Sohn said the bar was negligent because managers should have ejected Duffy earlier in the evening, when he had been unruly and had started a fight with another man.

“He was known as someone to keep an eye on,” Sohn said. “The bar had a duty to protect its customers from dangers and criminal acts that it can foresee.”

The bar’s attorney contended that the incident happened so fast that nothing could be done to stop it.

Sohn said jurors did not specify why they found Rushing partially liable. But he said he suspected that the panelists were not sure which witnesses to believe about who initiated the attack.