Lockyer joins fight to buy gun maker
Boy disabled by firearm flaw wants to close factory
The state Attorney General's Office has intervened in a federal bankruptcy trial in a way that could help a teenager buy out and shut down the manufacturer of a semiautomatic handgun with a design flaw that left the boy paralyzed from the neck down since the age of 7.
The boy is represented by San Rafael attorney Richard Ruggieri, who gave up representing other clients in his law practice three years ago to work on the boy's case full time.
In a highly unusual action, Randy Rossi, director of the firearms division of the state Department of Justice, wrote to a federal bankruptcy judge in Florida last Tuesday that the man the judge tentatively approved to buy the manufacturer, Paul Jimenez, is ineligible to make guns because he lacks federal and California firearms licenses.
Therefore, Rossi wrote to the judge, Jerry A. Funk of U.S. Bankruptcy Court, he was "submitting this written objection to the sale" on behalf of the state Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Lockyer's intervention could benefit Brandon Maxfield, now 17, who was accidentally shot through the chin and spine in 1994 when his babysitter was trying to unload a .38-caliber Bryco handgun owned by Brandon's parents.
Last year Brandon and Ruggieri won a record $24 million jury award in Alameda County Court against the gun's manufacturer, Bryco Arms, and Bryco's founder and the gun's designer, Bruce Jennings, after showing that because of a faulty design, the sitter had to turn the safety off to unload the gun.
Now, after having helped force Bryco into bankruptcy proceedings, Brandon and Ruggieri are trying to raise at least $150,000 to buy out the company, one of the leading makers of cheap handguns known as Saturday night specials, and melt down its inventory of 75,000 handgun frames and slides.
Ruggieri said the case has been all-consuming, but he pursued it because of Brandon and his injuries.
"Mr. Jennings and Mr. Jimenez have gone on record saying there is nothing wrong," Ruggieri said. "This is a plant that has put millions of these guns on the street."
Just because a jury finds a product defective does not mean it is taken off the market, Ruggieri said.
"It is one of the most glaring product defects I have seen in 22 years of practice," Ruggieri said. "There is nothing legally to get them to stop making millions of these guns and putting them on the street."
Funk last week gave tentative approval to the sale of Bryco's machinery for $150,000 to Jimenez, a former Bryco plant manager whom Ruggieri claims is simply a stand-in for Jennings. But Funk allowed 20 more days for objections and left open the possibility of higher bids.
"The attorney general's action could give us more time to raise money and make a higher offer," Ruggieri said.
But Jennings' lawyer, Ned Nashban, of Boca Raton, Fla., said, "The attorney general is barking up the wrong tree." Funk, Nashban said, is only deciding who will buy the company, not whether the new owner will manufacture guns.
"Mr. Jimenez could use the machinery to make widgets," Nashban said.
Neither Jennings nor Jimenez responded to messages left on their answering machines, but Nashban strongly denied any collusion between the two men. "I am not aware of any deal between Jennings and Jimenez," Nashban said.
Ruggieri said he believed Jennings "is just flipping the business over as he has done in the past."
In 1986, after losing an earlier lawsuit, Jennings sold his gun manufacturing company to his manager at the time, only to re-establish the business later, said Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis.
In their effort to buy out Bryco, Brandon and Ruggieri have taken the name Brandon's Arms and appealed for donations on their Web site. They have also asked for contributions from gun control groups, celebrities and politicians with strong anti-gun views, though with little success so far.
"I was very naive about it," Ruggieri said. "I thought here was a concrete chance to actually do something about stopping gun violence, not just make a donation to some politician."
An official for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the center's president, Michael Barnes, had been approached to give money to Brandon's Arms, but declined to do so. "Obviously no one wants to see Bryco back in business under any name," said the official, who said the organization had limited resources and was gearing up for a fight in Congress over renewing the assault-weapons ban. Brandon has received a payment of $3 million from one of Jennings' three ex-wives, as well as $5.75 million from the insurance companies for an unrelated gun distributor.
But he does not have much money to buy Bryco himself, Ruggieri said. First, he must reimburse Medi-Cal, California's state health care system, $1 million, and there were $500,000 in expenses for the trial, for expert witnesses, depositions and travel, Ruggieri said. Ruggieri would not disclose his fee, set by the court. The rest of the money has been deposited in a trust for Brandon's lifetime medical care, estimated at $11 million, and his education.
Collecting the judgment against Jennings has been complicated by his efforts to protect his assets.
In a 1999 interview in Business Week magazine, Jennings described his strategy for dealing with lawsuits against his companies. "They can file for bankruptcy, dissolve, go away until the litigation passes by, then reform and build guns to the new standard - if there is a new standard."
Jennings not only controls Bryco, the gun maker, but also B.L. Jennings Inc., which distributed the guns; seven trusts in the names of his three children and a string of luxury boats, cars and planes, Ruggieri has said in court documents.
In 2002, shortly before Brandon's case went to trial, Jennings, who lived in Southern California and Nevada, traveled to Florida to consult with Nashban, a bankruptcy lawyer, on what Nashban has described as estate planning.
Within a few days, Jennings bought a house in Daytona Beach for $950,000 and an annuity for $500,000, according to the bankruptcy court records. Under Florida law, people sued for bankruptcy can protect the entire value of their houses and in many cases their annuities.
Jennings sold Bryco's factory building in Costa Mesa to a real estate company, Knowleton Communities Inc., for $4 million. The money was deposited in some of the seven partnerships in the names of Jennings' three children, Ruggieri has said in court documents.
In a deposition for the bankruptcy proceedings, Jimenez said he would buy Bryco with a loan from Knowleton Communities.
Nashban, Jennings' lawyer, said Jennings' purchase of a home in Florida and the annuity were "prudent estate planning to protect his family from his business. Anyone in a high-risk business does that."
Ruggieri has objected to Funk's decision to allow the proceeds of the sale to Jimenez to be deposited in the bank account of Nashban's law firm, Quarles & Brady, not a neutral party.
"Here's the guy who advised Jennings on how to hide his assets now being in charge of holding the money to pay the creditors," Ruggieri said.
The federal bankruptcy trustee in Jacksonville, Fla., Felicia Turner, filed a motion with Funk last Monday supporting Ruggieri's complaint.
Last week Brandon was back in Oakland Children's Hospital for what he described in a telephone interview as a "very minor" operation, a skin graft to relieve a pressure sore.
Brandon is in high school in Willits, where he lives with his mother and father. He is hoping to be admitted to UC Davis to study marine biology or paleontology.
Brandon said he harbors no personal grudge, but wonders, "How can he look at himself in the morning, knowing some kid is going to be injured by one of his guns?"
So why is Brandon Maxfield, a minor, being allowed to bid?
Boy disabled by firearm flaw wants to close factory
The state Attorney General's Office has intervened in a federal bankruptcy trial in a way that could help a teenager buy out and shut down the manufacturer of a semiautomatic handgun with a design flaw that left the boy paralyzed from the neck down since the age of 7.
The boy is represented by San Rafael attorney Richard Ruggieri, who gave up representing other clients in his law practice three years ago to work on the boy's case full time.
In a highly unusual action, Randy Rossi, director of the firearms division of the state Department of Justice, wrote to a federal bankruptcy judge in Florida last Tuesday that the man the judge tentatively approved to buy the manufacturer, Paul Jimenez, is ineligible to make guns because he lacks federal and California firearms licenses.
Therefore, Rossi wrote to the judge, Jerry A. Funk of U.S. Bankruptcy Court, he was "submitting this written objection to the sale" on behalf of the state Attorney General Bill Lockyer.
Lockyer's intervention could benefit Brandon Maxfield, now 17, who was accidentally shot through the chin and spine in 1994 when his babysitter was trying to unload a .38-caliber Bryco handgun owned by Brandon's parents.
Last year Brandon and Ruggieri won a record $24 million jury award in Alameda County Court against the gun's manufacturer, Bryco Arms, and Bryco's founder and the gun's designer, Bruce Jennings, after showing that because of a faulty design, the sitter had to turn the safety off to unload the gun.
Now, after having helped force Bryco into bankruptcy proceedings, Brandon and Ruggieri are trying to raise at least $150,000 to buy out the company, one of the leading makers of cheap handguns known as Saturday night specials, and melt down its inventory of 75,000 handgun frames and slides.
Ruggieri said the case has been all-consuming, but he pursued it because of Brandon and his injuries.
"Mr. Jennings and Mr. Jimenez have gone on record saying there is nothing wrong," Ruggieri said. "This is a plant that has put millions of these guns on the street."
Just because a jury finds a product defective does not mean it is taken off the market, Ruggieri said.
"It is one of the most glaring product defects I have seen in 22 years of practice," Ruggieri said. "There is nothing legally to get them to stop making millions of these guns and putting them on the street."
Funk last week gave tentative approval to the sale of Bryco's machinery for $150,000 to Jimenez, a former Bryco plant manager whom Ruggieri claims is simply a stand-in for Jennings. But Funk allowed 20 more days for objections and left open the possibility of higher bids.
"The attorney general's action could give us more time to raise money and make a higher offer," Ruggieri said.
But Jennings' lawyer, Ned Nashban, of Boca Raton, Fla., said, "The attorney general is barking up the wrong tree." Funk, Nashban said, is only deciding who will buy the company, not whether the new owner will manufacture guns.
"Mr. Jimenez could use the machinery to make widgets," Nashban said.
Neither Jennings nor Jimenez responded to messages left on their answering machines, but Nashban strongly denied any collusion between the two men. "I am not aware of any deal between Jennings and Jimenez," Nashban said.
Ruggieri said he believed Jennings "is just flipping the business over as he has done in the past."
In 1986, after losing an earlier lawsuit, Jennings sold his gun manufacturing company to his manager at the time, only to re-establish the business later, said Dr. Garen Wintemute, director of the Violence Prevention Research Program at the University of California at Davis.
In their effort to buy out Bryco, Brandon and Ruggieri have taken the name Brandon's Arms and appealed for donations on their Web site. They have also asked for contributions from gun control groups, celebrities and politicians with strong anti-gun views, though with little success so far.
"I was very naive about it," Ruggieri said. "I thought here was a concrete chance to actually do something about stopping gun violence, not just make a donation to some politician."
An official for the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence said the center's president, Michael Barnes, had been approached to give money to Brandon's Arms, but declined to do so. "Obviously no one wants to see Bryco back in business under any name," said the official, who said the organization had limited resources and was gearing up for a fight in Congress over renewing the assault-weapons ban. Brandon has received a payment of $3 million from one of Jennings' three ex-wives, as well as $5.75 million from the insurance companies for an unrelated gun distributor.
But he does not have much money to buy Bryco himself, Ruggieri said. First, he must reimburse Medi-Cal, California's state health care system, $1 million, and there were $500,000 in expenses for the trial, for expert witnesses, depositions and travel, Ruggieri said. Ruggieri would not disclose his fee, set by the court. The rest of the money has been deposited in a trust for Brandon's lifetime medical care, estimated at $11 million, and his education.
Collecting the judgment against Jennings has been complicated by his efforts to protect his assets.
In a 1999 interview in Business Week magazine, Jennings described his strategy for dealing with lawsuits against his companies. "They can file for bankruptcy, dissolve, go away until the litigation passes by, then reform and build guns to the new standard - if there is a new standard."
Jennings not only controls Bryco, the gun maker, but also B.L. Jennings Inc., which distributed the guns; seven trusts in the names of his three children and a string of luxury boats, cars and planes, Ruggieri has said in court documents.
In 2002, shortly before Brandon's case went to trial, Jennings, who lived in Southern California and Nevada, traveled to Florida to consult with Nashban, a bankruptcy lawyer, on what Nashban has described as estate planning.
Within a few days, Jennings bought a house in Daytona Beach for $950,000 and an annuity for $500,000, according to the bankruptcy court records. Under Florida law, people sued for bankruptcy can protect the entire value of their houses and in many cases their annuities.
Jennings sold Bryco's factory building in Costa Mesa to a real estate company, Knowleton Communities Inc., for $4 million. The money was deposited in some of the seven partnerships in the names of Jennings' three children, Ruggieri has said in court documents.
In a deposition for the bankruptcy proceedings, Jimenez said he would buy Bryco with a loan from Knowleton Communities.
Nashban, Jennings' lawyer, said Jennings' purchase of a home in Florida and the annuity were "prudent estate planning to protect his family from his business. Anyone in a high-risk business does that."
Ruggieri has objected to Funk's decision to allow the proceeds of the sale to Jimenez to be deposited in the bank account of Nashban's law firm, Quarles & Brady, not a neutral party.
"Here's the guy who advised Jennings on how to hide his assets now being in charge of holding the money to pay the creditors," Ruggieri said.
The federal bankruptcy trustee in Jacksonville, Fla., Felicia Turner, filed a motion with Funk last Monday supporting Ruggieri's complaint.
Last week Brandon was back in Oakland Children's Hospital for what he described in a telephone interview as a "very minor" operation, a skin graft to relieve a pressure sore.
Brandon is in high school in Willits, where he lives with his mother and father. He is hoping to be admitted to UC Davis to study marine biology or paleontology.
Brandon said he harbors no personal grudge, but wonders, "How can he look at himself in the morning, knowing some kid is going to be injured by one of his guns?"
So why is Brandon Maxfield, a minor, being allowed to bid?
:banghead: 
