INDIANAPOLIS (Legal Newsline) - A couple who sued a bail bonding company over the shooting death of their son during a chaotic arrest attempt lost their chance at winning compensation after an Indiana appeals court upheld a jury verdict for the defense.
Atta Belle and Larry Dwayne Helman sued Barnett’s Bail Bonds, three of its employees and Lexington National Insurance Corp. after their son Gary was killed in an exchange of gunfire as they tried to apprehend him on outstanding warrants in August 2014. Local police left the job of arresting Gary Helman to the bail bondsmen because he was “a bit of a nut” with a “propensity for filing lawsuits,” according to court records.
The bail bondsmen traced Gary to his parents house and spent several months conducting surveillance, once trying to gain entrance to the house by pretending to be interested in buying it. Finally they convinced a local reporter named Stacey Staley to interview Gary because he had stated on his Facebook page that he wanted the media to expose “all injustice that has happened.” During the interview, Staley said, Atta said she had a gun and would use it to blow up a propane tank on the property if the bail bondsmen approached.
After Staley left the house, the bail bondsmen closed in. The plan was to monitor the back door and grab Gary when he ran out but instead Atta was waiting there. When the bail bondsmen tried to subdue her, Larry shot bondsman Tadd Martin twice and then Gary emerged and shot him three times more. Martin then shot and killed Gary.
The Helmans sued in 2016 over multiple torts including assault and trespass. The judge dismissed the negligence claims and then split the trial into a liability and damages phase. At the conclusion of the liability phase, after numerous disputes over evidence, the jury found for the defendants.
The Helmans appealed but in an Aug. 9 ruling the Indiana Court of Appeals upheld the verdict. The plaintiffs made several arguments including that the trial judge had submitted incorrect instructions to the jury, neglecting to tell them the defendants could be liable for harming third parties.
The appeals court disagreed. While the plaintiffs lawyers claimed the instructions misstated the law, the appeals court ruled, their lawyers failed to explain why their instructions interpreted the law correctly. The Helmans also argued jurors should have been instructed that bail agents can’t harm third parties, but that is the law for anyone and jurors were instructed on the elements of assault and battery as well as civil conspiracy.
The plaintiffs also argued Indiana law required the jury to be given forms to assign a percentage of liability to each defendant at the conclusion of the liability phase. But since the jury returned a verdict for the defendants, the court ruled, “there was no need to provide for the allocation of fault on the jury forms.”