“[Former LAPD Officer Enrique] Chavez was off-duty and his son, Collin, was in the back of the family truck in 2006 when the 3-year-old grabbed his father’s gun and fired,” mercurynews.com reports. “Chavez was shot and paralyzed from the waist down. Chavez and his wife sued, arguing the gun lacked a grip safety and was too easy to fire. Glock noted that Chavez acknowledged leaving the gun near his child, who wasn’t in a car seat.” GLOCK has settled the suit for an unknown amount. “While the settlement seems to open up GLOCK to other lawsuits, law enforcement sales account for a large amount of their sales. And . . . there you have it.
Stupid. Just stupid. Isn’t this kinda the same thing as the sandy hook families v. Remington lawsuit? I thought that gun mfgs weren’t on the hook for end user misusage?
Yes, but even the legal process to get to that point can be more expensive than settling.
Very true, if he agreed to settle for far less than the cost of going to trial then worth it to settle.
Loser pays needs to happen. That’s what the rest of the civilized world does.
Short run , yes, but not in the long run.
No, they are claiming manufacture negligence so this is a normal product liability case. They settled because juries can be capricious.
Glock calls their pistols “safe action” and talks about their three internal safeties prevent the gun from being inadvertently fired. However, since all three safeties are defeated when you pull the trigger they have opened themselves up to a product liabilty suit. I am actually surprised that no “Glock leg” victim has sued them before.
No other gun maker that uses a Glock style trigger makes safety claims or brags about their safe action. Springfield makes a similar gun with a grip safety and optional thumb safety. I can see the plaintiff’s attorney demonstrating how an object getting tangled inside the trigger guard sets off a Glock and not a Springfield. It doesn’t matter that Officer Chavez’s own negligence was the cause a Jury is going to blame Glock.
Glock is stuck with a fundamentally unsafe design because adding a real safety opens them up to a class action suit. That’s what they get for claiming their pistols are safe action even when they obviously aren’t. I don’t want to say Glock is done but if they now get hit with multiple lawsuits and/or a class action. They may be forced to leave the American market.
Axe meet grinder!
I just did what any competent trial lawyer would have done — eviscerated Glock with their own words.
Note: I am not a lawyer nor did I stay at a Holiday Inn express last night.
All this x1000.
I’ve been saying it for years, the safe action trigger is a joke. Glocks are great tools, you can’t kill em, for all their downfalls. But “safe action”? Hardly.
Truth..is personal responsibility is dead. We do stupid shit, then look to blame others. I have had people question my gun placement chioces, never has my responce been, well I’ll just blame the manufacturer. As an instructor, I waiting for one of my students ( or students assailants) to bring me in to the fold.
Next up …we go after car maker for cars not being DUI proof and silverware markers for making people fat. Don’t laugh or scoff, same legal present exist, just need a good lawyer to work the case.
I feel for guy but this was not Glock’s fault.
It is bad for the industry that they settled.
Very much agree.
That’s terrible! I also feel bad for the guy, but the negligence involved is entirely his own. There is nothing unsafe about Glock’s design. He just shouldn’t have left a loaded gun where a toddler could access it.
Regarding the lack of a grip safety, that would be like me suing Nissan since my Altima doesn’t have all wheel drive, I were I to crash on an icy road. If you want a grip safety, then buy an XD instead of a Glock. If you want all wheel drive, buy a Subaru instead of an Altima.
Just absurd. This man should have to PAY GLOCK instead. He is slandering their product as unsafe, and wasting the court’s time with his frivolous lawsuit.
Sounds like a bad dad as well, letting his toddler roam around the back of a vehicle with loaded firearms, and not buckling him in either.
I do NOT feel bad for the guy. He broke firearm safety, should pay the price. Not sue a company for doing what they are supposed to do. I didn’t sue anyone for my life altering accident.
I feel bad that his negligent stupidity resulted in him being paralyzed. His paralysis is the price he pays for violating gun safety.
It is possible to feel sorry for people, even when the bad things that happen to them are their own fault.
Suing Glock over his own mistake however, makes him a scumbag.
Agreed. This is entirely Officer Chavez’s fault for leaving a loaded gun in reach of his 3 year old son.
I have both an XD and a Subaru! Winning!
No it is not. Settlements do not set legal precedent, and therefor cannot be used to decide or influence similar suits. All this does is save Glock money and potential bad press.
They don’t set legal precedent, but they set cultural precedent. Sooner or later one goes the distance, and bam!…legal precedent.
“the gun lacked a grip safety and was too easy to fire”
This guy lets his 3 year old get hold of his gun and the grip safety would have made that ok?
And Glock just bent over and paid out on this?
Aren’t we supposed to be careful and be responsible for what we do anymore?
Glock obviously just wanted this to go away and made an economic decision here. How could this reasonably be determined to be Glocks responsibility? This sounds like a lawsuit that should not have been allowed.
Haven’t we always heard that lawsuits are out of control, that lawyers are out of control…
Who was the cops attorney, Saul Goodman?
No.
Yes.
No.
It can’t.
Probably.
I feel bad the dude is paralyzed, but this sounds like the worst kind of negligence all around and not Glock’s fault.
What kind of trained law enforcement professional is so careless as to leave a loaded gun near child? If anything, he should be charged with endangering a minor. It’s basic gun safety, and yet he couldn’t even get that right. Tell me again why we are supposed to “wait for the police” if they can fail in the most basic of gun safety.
^This…trained professional we’re supposed to rely on. Can’t this double as IGOTD?
^^^^^^^^^This time 1,000,000,000 to the 1 billionth power!^^^^^^^^^
Why Glock and not the department that issued it to an officer as negligent as Chavez? Chavez didn’t know it didn’t have a grip safety (or manual safety) when let his son have access to it? These sorts of cases shouldn’t reach juries that are likely just to want to find money for somebody suffering.
I guarantee this was settled by Glock due to pressure by the police unions. This is a clear case of owner neglect and a trained officer should know full well the risk of leaving a Glock unsecured.
I’m with you, I think Glock sees this as a PR move as much as anything. If this were a “regular” citizen and not a “more special/only one” then I bet Glock would have fought it. Heck it may have even been thrown out if it were not brought by an officer. There’s equality for you…
I imagine this will only encourage similar lawsuits.
“due to pressure by the police unions”
Didn’t occur to me, but yea, that actually sounds very possible.
No, it was just a decision that settling was less expensive than a court fight which Glock might even lose with the wrong jury. Unfortunately, there is nothing new in this and it isn’t confined to the firearms industry.
Years ago, a high school kid, who worked part time for a dealer washing cars, bought a Firebird from them. One night, he and some friends were screwing around like kids do. They went off the road at 110 mph killing or badly injuring at least one of them. The parents sued the dealer claiming that they were negligent in selling the car to the kid. They also sued General Motors claiming that they were negligent in building a car that could go that fast. GM settled to keep the case out of court.
In a similar case in my state, the car was a Fiat X1/9, which was an underpowered, mid-engine, sports car. The passenger was turned into a quadriplegic. Desperate for money to pay the kid’s astronomical bills for long term care, his family sued Fiat claiming that the car was badly designed. Actually, the X1/9 handled so well that you had to drive stupid fast to get into trouble with it. I don’t know how the case came out but, given attitudes in my state, I wouldn’t be surprised if the jury recognized that it was the kid’s fault, not Fiat’s.
Somewhat before then, a grandmother had her grandson in the front seat of a Chrysler minivan without a seat belt. They T-boned a car that ran a red light. The air bag broke the kid’s neck turning him into a quadriplegic. The family sued Chrysler in an attempt to pay the long term care bills. I never heard how that one came out.
When I worked for a railroad, I knew a train engineer in Texas who had hit so many cars at grade crossings that he transferred to Wyoming where there were fewer people to hit. (In Texas, even the cops ignore warning lights and go around crossing gates.) In the engineer’s last accident, a woman drove around a line of cars that had already stopped before getting hit in the crossing. Her family sued the railroad and won.
The blame for this lies principally at the feet of state legislatures. It would stop if liability laws were amended to prevent recovering damages when the injured party’s own bad behavior contributed materially to the accident.
This is why we need real tort reform in this country. If bringers of frivolous lawsuits stood an equal chance of being liable for paying everything they demand then these kinds of suits would dry up.
But in this case there’s no doubt Glock used simple math and decided to not piss off one of their biggest customers, law enforcement. But sometimes the good fight IS worth fighting.
“This is why we need real tort reform in this country.”
I agree, but there is one problem. The proverbial gorilla in the room.
Who writes, argues, and makes the laws in the U.S.? The Congress – Senate.
The most common profession prior to being elected?
Lawyers – Attorneys…
Sorry, I just have to..
What’s a 1000 lawyers at the bottom of the sea?
A good start…
Settling just opens them up to more terrorists, uhm, lawyers!
This is how other industries screwed themselves. It may be cheaper short term, but long term it will be more expensive because now every ambulance chaser will look for a payday.
They must be operating under the successful model of Danegeld, which is the money that you pay to the Danes once in order to make them go away forever.
Am willing to bet there’s a non-disclosure and a non-admission clause in the settlement. While the company paid out, I’m certain that they made sure others can’t cash in.
How do you mean there, what do these settlement clauses have to do with potential future cases?
But only our betters should be armed(like this doofus cop). Sorry they settled…
It probably was a decision by Glock’s liability insurance company that led to this settlement. Glock, as the insured, may have had some input into the decision, but in the end the company that writes the check makes the rules.
An operation as big as Glock is most likely “self-insured”, which is to say, not insured at all.
Maybe for small stuff, say up to $5 mm, but then they would have an “excess” policy on top of that. And even then, I’d consider that risky for a gunmaker.
Takes me back to the days of that episode of Beverly Hills 90210…
So… the officer not only left his firearm unattended next to his child, but also left his child (illegally) out of a child’s seat in a vehicle… and it’s Glocks fault?
So much for the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
This is a product liability case explicitly exempted from protection of lawful commerce act.
Please elaborate. The gun functioned exactly as it was designed to. Why would this exempt it from the PLCAA?
PLCAA, as I recall was to keep gun manufacturers for being sued when someone used their gun to commit a crime. It didn’t get them off the hook for a defective gun or a bad design. That last is what was being claimed in the lawsuit. (True or not doesn’t matter, the basis was bad design.)
Steve has pretty explained it. In my post at the top of the comment section I outlined the design and marketing issue. To summarize it, Glock uses the word safe action and talks about the designs three internal safeties that prevent the gun from unintentionally firing. However, the safeties are all disabled by pulling the trigger. The plainiff’s lawyers are arguing that this is a design flaw and the Glock design does not have a safe action and to claim it does is false and misleading.
Did Chavez face possible prosecution, have to take safety training, provide proof of secure firearm storage, and give 10 speeches like Ms. Gilt?
http://www.thetruthaboutguns.com/2016/05/robert-farago/florida-court-returns-gun-mom-shot-four-year-old/
No, but he’ll never walk again.
I hear that, no matter what….still an officer lost his ability to walk for the rest of his life.
He’s going to relive that one moment sometime during each and every day for the rest of his life and his kid will deal with the eventual guilt for shooting dad.
Whole thing sucks.
Always pisses me off when i hear of these irresponsible law suits forcing a big corp to settle out of court to shut some dumb ass up.
I guess Ms. Gilt was shot by her son but was “only” seriously wounded. She had to suffer more to learn her lesson.
“suffer”? Last I checked she isn’t exactly being nailed to a cross. If she had to choose between having to buy a holster for her car and giving some speeches OR not being able to walk, I bet she’s okay with the former.
This story brings to mind this story http://www.wafb.com/story/31951482/the-investigators-grand-jury-decided-not-to-indict-reserve-addis-officer-accused-of-shooting-killing-wife, which I just read this morning. Seems given the case Glock just settled, some manufacturer requiring a trigger pull for disassembly could be on the hook for this death as well (I can’t say “Glock” because the pistol manufacturer isn’t named, and it could I suppose have been an XD or M&P, but given that he was a reserve deputy my guess is that it was a Glock).
Yep……American legal system.
Here’s your S.T.F.U money dumbass!!
Ooohhh no safeties…..boo hoo!
Well you could have ….NOT PUT A LOADED GUN WITHIN ACCESS of your UNRESTRAINED KID!!!
How about….(put the weapon on con 1) CLEAR IT??
Wear it!!# Lock it up…..????
Truly sorry for your loss of spinal fluid but your lucky it’s not your kids funeral or yours.
No honor by suing glock for your mistake.
I thought this story was going to be about the officer getting charged or something and I was about ready to come in here and argue that he’s been punished enough but… really? Suing a gun manufacturer that makes a gun which goes off when the trigger is pulled because you were stupid enough to leave it next to a kid?
Idiot. Greedy idiot.
Before the M&P, they would have told this guy to pound sand. Now, there’s competition, they have to suck up to LE.
And if Chavy was in construction instead and left pressure in his compressor tank and left a nail gun on the floor, and his kid got it, played around with it, and shot a nail through the seat and right into Chavy’s spine and Chavy sued on the same basis – everyone (including Libtards) would say “WTF! – you left a kid back there with your stuff, this is your fault! Not Dewalts!” But with a gun – yes – because GUNS!
If Chavtard was at home on a ladder and Chavtards offspring accidentally bumped the ladder while horsing around, nobody would say “let’s sue this ladder company!” But it’s apparently acceptable and politically correct for Glock – because GUNS!
This guy got disarmed and shot by his 3 year old? And that was somehow Glock’s fault?
The only way to stop a bad toddler with a gun is a good toddler with a gun!
/sarc
Dang! And I was all set to bid on a Glock 23 on Gunbroker. They’re just not safe enough for my back seat…
I can sort of see why they would want to settle. The plaintiff’s theory was that that Glock’s design – a design in over 10 million guns around the world – is faulty. If that theory were to get a judicial stamp of approval, they’d be filing bankruptcy papers the following day.
“You can’t fix stupid” – Ron White
So if you buy a car that only has a front airbag, and then get t-boned and hurt, you can sue the manufacturer for your failure to buy a car with side airbags…and at least have a chance to settle it? Got it.
This is why only cops should have guns. Oh, wait…
Over 100 years ago the U.S. Military demanded a manual safety be put on the 1911 pistol. The U.S. Military knew that without a manual safety recruits would immediately start to accidentally shoot themselves and other people without such a safety device. Have todays Morons learned nothing from this? Obviously not.
And if we even go back even farther in time several revolver companies in the U.S. made a revolver with a grip safety and a very long hard double action pull. This was an attempt to even make a revolver much safer to use and by the way it worked. And there were several revolvers designed with manual safeties as well. But one must remember that unlike the revolver with a long hard double action pull the Glock has a short stroke single action type pull making it certain to go off accidentally with only a short movement of the trigger, this is what makes the Glock far more dangerous than any revolver.
The average person today does not have a job that requires mechanical skill as our manufacturing jobs have all but disappeared. This makes it all the worse to design a pistol like the Glock without a manual safety. People simply do not realize that handling or carrying a Glock or Glock look alike pistol is exactly like walking around with a revolver with the hammer cocked back and they then shove them in coat pockets or pants pockets or the waist band or put them in a purse or even under a pillow without realizing the gun can and will go off. “Gun week” over the years has carried countless stories of Glock accidental killings and maiming’s with the latest only about a month ago when a Cop got out of his car and the Glock went off and shot an innocent person.
Glock originally designed the pistol with an exposed hammer but was told by advisors that if people “could see the danger of a hammer cocked back” no one in their right mind would buy such a gun. This is why the gun was designed without a hammer. In other words “what people cannot see they do not fear” which is exactly why we have such idiotic things like Nuclear Power Plants but that’s another story.
The stupidity of the take down system of a Glock is another accident waiting to happen as it requires you to pull the trigger with the slide forward. An accident just waiting to happen and happen it does all the time. History has already proven it many times over. Contrast this with the Beretta 92 that has a manual safety and requires you to lock back the slide before taking down the pistol.
I recently was surprised to learn that was quite a large amount of foreign countries that demanded Glock put a factory manual safety on the guns that would be imported into the country for use by their police. In the U.S. Glock does not even make that an option to the civilians that buy this gun. If Glock had done this they at least could use the excuse that the customer was too damn stupid to buy their much safer model and it was his choice to buy the model without the safety.
In conclusion I cannot help but think of a picture I once saw that showed a Chimpanzee holding a Glock pistol as there was little if any difference between the Chimps knowledge of how a Glock worked as compared to the average person that owns a Glock as it is as complicated as rocket science to them as they have not a clue as to how the gun actually works. Their purchase of the pistol proves it. I think only a complete Moron or Lunatic would dispute any of this as it would fly in the face of History many times over.
THIS IS ALL A TOTAL CROCK OF HORSE DEW PUCKY! OFFICER LEAVES HIS GUN WHERE HIS CHILD CAN HANDLE AND PULL TRIGGER IS GLOCK’S FAULT? ANY REVOLVER TRIGGER PULLED GOES BANG. EXAMPLES ABOUND AND THERE’S NO WAY TO DESIGN OR BUILD ANYTHING TO MAKE IT ‘STUPID’ PROOF.
Hopefully, Glock gave this careful consideration for other lawsuits as dumb as this off duty officer. At least the child wasn’t harmed and the negligent officer was the party shot; an officer who is trying to shift blame onto someone else- just like those who shot themselves in the leg and blamed Glock instead of party who pulled the trigger. What some don’t understand is these ‘lawsuits’ and costs to Glock will just be passed on to the rest of us as part of Glock’s ‘MSRP’ retail price.
By his last name and from being from California, he is use to welfare and just felt entitled to get get money from any one regardless if it was his fault. If we see an increase in the price of Glocks we can thank this POS. Im so glad he is not a cop anymore. Who wants a police officer with these kind of morals.
Comments are closed.