Nature of the Case
To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.
Facts
On June 1, 1985, Dennis Keliinui Kaululaau threw a hand grenade in the parking lot of a restaurant in Honolulu. The grenade exploded and injured Aaron Akiona, Adam Baker, and Edward Moore, (Ps) who were nearby. Kaululaau was convicted of attempted murder and is currently in prison. The grenade had been part of one of two lots of grenades manufactured for D. One lot, consisting of 30,000 grenades, was shipped to Iowa. The other lot was shipped to Japan (700 grenades), Germany (12,557 grenades), and Hawaii (11,450 grenades). These shipments took place between 1967 and 1969. D has no record of what happened to the grenades after these shipments. It has a policy of destroying records pertaining to grenades two years after the grenades are disposed of. Kaululaau maintains his innocence, so he has provided no information about how he got the grenade. The parties stipulated, that he had the grenade unlawfully and without the knowledge or consent of D. Ps filed suit under the FTCA alleging that the government was negligent in letting the grenade fall into Kaululaau's hands. The district court concluded that D owed a duty to Ps to safeguard its grenades, and it found that D had been negligent in failing to keep the grenade out of unauthorized hands and awarded damages to Ps The district court applied res ipsa loquitur to infer that the injuries would not have happened if the government had not been negligent in maintaining the grenade and by shifting the burden of proof to the government based on its destruction of records. D appealed.
Support@ bsmsphd.com
Casebriefs Co