SAN BERNARDINO CALIFORNIA June 16 2013
A civil court jury voted to award $55 million to a Rancho Cucamonga man who lost his legs because a private security firm’s security guard failed to protect him from a gang member who shot him at the Fontana apartment building where he lived in 2006, the panel decided.
The negligence lawsuit said a guard from Stratus Security Services neither broke up a late-night outdoor drinking party of about 10 men associated with the Crips gang, nor told shooting victim Antonio Steward and his two friends who were sitting outside on a nearby apartment stairwell to go back inside their own homes because it was dangerous. Jurors decided the case Thursday, June 13.
Steward, who was 17 when he was shot, is 24 years old now and in constant pain from the nine gunshot wounds he suffered, his attorney Gary Dordick of Beverly Hills said Friday, June 14.
Steward lives with his parents Steve Steward and Annie Camp in an apartment unequipped for his disabilities. Despite his wounds, he was able with prosthetics to walk across stage in his delayed graduation from Alta Loma High School in 2009. An article about the event called him “Miracle Man Walking.”
Steward volunteers at Loma Linda University Medical Center where he counsels new amputees. His prosthetic legs broke in a fall a few years ago, and no longer fit. They have not been replaceable since an insurance change with his 21st birthday.
The law firm representing Stratus relayed a message from its insurance adjuster on Friday that “the process is not over and we are not in a position to make a comment at this time.” Defense attorneys can seek a new trial, ask for the judge to overturn the jury’s verdict, or appeal. Dordick said defense attorneys indicated in court they plan to do use all three options if needed. The trial judge also can reduce the award.
In earlier court actions, Stratus claimed that the security guard believed the men were going back inside the apartment where they had been invited as guests, and there was no evidence of imminent danger.
Steward’s negligence lawsuit said the guard employed by Stratus Security Services should have ordered dispersal of a group of men who were drinking and partying outdoors at 12:30 a.m. Aug. 26, 2006 at the apartment house complex on Arrow Boulevard in Fontana. Instead, the guard told the men about a noise complaint and then walked away, testimony and court documents said.
The security guard said he was reluctant to do much more than that. “If you’d been there, you wouldn’t have wanted to be there,” court records said the man testified in an early hearing in the case. “It was about 10 of them and one of me…it was just a situation I didn’t want to be in.” One of the men from the group shot Steward shortly after the guard went to his car to write a daily activity report.
If the security guard did not feel safe dispersing the large group of men, he should have told Steward and his friends to go back inside their apartments and called police the lawsuit said. Dordick said there was testimony that Steward obeyed security guard orders in the past because he didn’t want his family to get evicted.
But that night, Dordick said, the security guard did not issue any warnings to Steward or his friends. Shortly after the guard went to his car, Roosevelt Turner broke away from the group of men, tried to bum a cigarette off Steward, and then shot him.
Only about half the $55 million will actually be available to Steward, if it is not reduced further by either post-verdict action or appeals, Dordick said.
Even before any possible reduction of the jury’s award by the trial judge or from appeals, the actual amount is already reduced to 49 percent Dordick said . Jurors assigned 49 percent responsibility of the shooting to Stratus Security Services, 49 percent to Turner, and 2 percent to Steward.
Steward is not liable to himself. Turner, who is currently serving two consecutive life-with-possibility-of-parole prison sentences stemming from the shooting, also is not a source for paying damages. “I don’t know how many license plates he can make,” Dordick said.
But at $26.9 million, “People hear a number like that and they think it’s extraordinarily large – and it is,” Dordick said “But it is a reasonable number, given the catastrophic nature of the injury and damages. Both of his legs were amputated above the knee. He has had 56 surgeries and will need at least 40 more in the future. More than 40 percent of his stomach was removed.”
Dordick said Steward will need constant care for the rest of his life and will battle an array of infections. The quality of that care will determine how long Steward will live. He lost his legs to gangrene which was caused by a lack of blood flowing to the limbs, a complication of the gunshot wounds, court records said.
“I was pretty shocked at the amount,” Steward said Friday in a phone interview. “Now I just want to get it over, move on, and try to be a productive member of society.” He said he plans to use whatever money he actually gets to get a handicap-equipped home for himself and his parents, and to make donations to Loma Linda University Medical Center, where he was treated and underwent physical rehabilitation.
Steward said he is not angry. “It was just tragic. People were not in their right minds. It was just a shock; I remember I just hit the ground and it was, ‘are you serious? The guy just shot me.’ I’m still here, and I am grateful for that, so I can’t be mad at the guard or the shooter.”
“God has a reason that he saved me, but He won’t let you know that; you have to find that out for yourself…I don’t cry about it, I just take a breath and do what I have to do,” Steward said in a phone interview. He said he tells new amputee patients that he counsels, “If you are a man, you need to man up and if you are a woman, you need to woman up. We are here for a reason, because we were all saved.”
Source- PE.com