Rains v. Bend Of The River

124 S.W.3d 580 (Tenn. App. 2003)

Purchase the Printed Copy at bsmsphd.com

Nature of the Case

To access this section all you need to do is click here and register.

Facts

Aaron Rains (P) was an eighteen-year-old who committed suicide with his parents' .25 caliber handgun. Mr. Rains's father had always owned firearms and had taught P, his son, to shoot at a young age. He forbade P to use the firearms unless he was present to supervise. P stored the handgun and the other weapons in a locked gun case in his home, and he kept the key to the gun case in his wife's jewelry box. P found the key to his father's gun case and removed the .25 caliber handgun. He closed and locked the case and then returned the key to his mother's jewelry box where he had found it. Then, he set out to find ammunition for the pistol because his father did not have any ammunition in the house. P stopped at the sporting goods department at a local K-Mart. He inquired about the minimum age for purchasing .25 caliber ammunition and was told that buyers of that ammunition must be at least twenty-one years old. P showed the clerk his driver's license and commented, 'Oh, I'm only eighteen.' Rather than purchasing the ammunition, P purchased a package of BBs and left K-Mart. After leaving K-Mart, P drove to D. P purchased a box of Winchester .25 ACP automatic caliber 50 gr. full metal jacket cartridges. The store clerk did not ask P for proof of his age and accepted P's personal check in the amount of $11.85 in payment for the ammunition. P drove his car to Walker Hollow Road and parked. He loaded his parents' pistol with the ammunition he had purchased at Bend of the River and fatally shot himself. The box of ammunition bearing Bend of the River's price tag was found in his car. It is undisputed that P used the .25 caliber handgun and ammunition to commit suicide. It is equally undisputed that neither P's parents nor any other family members had any sort of warning that Mr. Rains was planning to take his own life. From all outward signs, he was a happy, well-adjusted young man. P's father found a suicide note in the wallet. The note shed no light on the basis for P's decision to take his own life. P's parents filed a wrongful death lawsuit seeking actual and punitive damages from D for negligence per se and negligent entrustment. D was negligent per se because it had sold handgun ammunition to a person who was less than twenty-one years of age in violation of the Gun Control Act [18 U.S.C. § 922(b)(1) (2000)]. P asserted that D should not have entrusted handgun ammunition to an “18-year-old child.' D moved for a summary judgment, asserting (1) that P's suicide was an intervening, superseding cause that relieved it of liability, (2) that more than fifty percent of the fault for P's death must be attributed to others, and (3) that the punitive damage claim must fail because P's parents had produced no evidence of intentional, fraudulent, malicious, or reckless conduct on its part. The trial court denied the motion. Ps amended their complaint to add a claim for loss of consortium for themselves and P's surviving brother and sister. The trial court denied a motion to dismiss the consortium claims but granted D a motion to seek an interlocutory appeal from its denial of the summary judgment motion with regard to the wrongful death claims and the motion to dismiss the loss of consortium claims.