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Sims v. Clark McDuffie Crates12/29/2000
Jerry W. Sims filed a wrongful-death action against Michael T. Ilczyszin and Clark McDuffie Crates. The trial court entered a summary judgment in favor of Ilczyszin and a judgment on a jury verdict in favor of Crates. Sims appeals. We affirm the judgment in favor of Ilczyszin, reverse the judgment in favor of Crates, and remand.
I.
In the early morning hours of July 24, 1998, Jerry Sims's 16-year- old son, Christopher Brian ("Chris") Sims, shot himself in the head with a .357 handgun while he was at a party hosted by Crates at Ilczyszin's home. Ilczyszin is Crates's stepfather and is a Montgomery police officer. He was on assignment in Hawaii with the Marine Corps Reserve when the incident occurred, and did not know that his stepson was having a party in his home while he was out of town.
Crates and Chris Sims became friends while they lived on the same street. At the time of the accident, Crates was 23 and Chris Sims was 16. Chris Sims's parents are divorced. The testimony reflects that during the year before the incident, Chris Sims was admitted by his mother to a substance-abuse program operated by Bradford Health Services. After being discharged from Bradford, Chris went to a facility named The Bridges, but he was discharged from that facility for fighting. His father, who testified that initially he did not believe Chris had a drug problem, then obtained custody of him. Chris was expelled from a private school for fighting, and he switched schools several times. Chris also attended Project Upward, but was expelled from that program for fighting. Chris began working with a logging company owned by the grandparents of one of his close friends, Ronnie Armstrong. At the time of the incident, Chris Sims, Crates, and Armstrong were all working for the logging company and were living in Georgia together. They had returned to Montgomery a week before the incident. Because Ilczyszin was in Hawaii, he did not know they had returned. Before leaving to go on duty with the Marine Corps, he had told Crates that, by the end of August, he would no longer allow him to live in his home because, he had said, Crates was 23 years old and "he needed to get on with his own life."
The record indicates that Ilczyszin collects handguns and rifles. The rifles are kept in a locked cabinet. The handguns are kept in Ilczyszin's bedroom in an unlocked cabinet that is built into the headboard of his bed. All of the handguns are kept unloaded, however, and the ammunition is kept in a separate locked cabinet. The testimony during the trial indicated that Chris obtained the ammunition for the .357 handgun from another teenager who attended the party, Isaac Barber, not from Ilczyszin's locked cabinet. Barber testified that he and his brother "took" the ammunition from a neighbor.
The evidence indicates that Crates opened Ilczyszin's home to a group of teenagers on the afternoon and evening of July 23. During the night, Chris and Barber went into Ilczyszin's bedroom and took two unloaded handguns. They walked around with the guns in the waistbands of their pants. About a half hour later, the group left and went to Barber's house. There, Chris got into an argument with Jessica Armstrong; the argument resulted in his hitting an aquarium and badly cutting his hand. His friends took him to a local emergency room ("ER"), but he would not get out of the car. Later, when he began to feel sick, they again took him to the ER, where he was treated for the cut to his hand. The group left the ER about 3:45 a.m. and returned to Ilczyszin's house.
About 4:00 a.m., Melissa Horn, Ann Barber, and Maria Murphy were in the kitchen with Chris, who at the time was playing with a .357 handgu
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