A jury should decide whether a 16-year-old boy was negligent when he picked up and put down a semiautomatic rifle that was later used to kill two teens, a judge ruled Friday.
Dennis Cramm grabbed the rifle after a staged fistfight turned to gunplay on May 30, 2000, in south Everett.
Cramm fired into the back of a car, killing two young men who had come to watch the fight.
On Friday, Snohomish County Superior Court Judge Kenneth Cowsert turned down a bid to dismiss a civil lawsuit against Daniel Woodall, who was convicted of helping Cramm hide from police.
Woodall, then 16, had been put in charge of the military-style SKS rifle that was used in the killing.
The parents of Jason Thompson and Jesse Stoner brought the lawsuit. Thompson and Stoner, both 18, had been in the back seat of a car leaving the area when they were killed.
The suit seeks damages from Pioneer Insurance Co. and the homeowner’s policy taken out by Woodall’s parents, Michael R. and Donna L. Woodall. The policy has a $300,000 limit, Pioneer lawyer Andrea Holburn said.
The policy comes into play because of the allegations against their underage son.
The suit names a number of people, including Cramm, who was 17 at the time of the shooting. He was convicted of murder and sentenced to 60 years in prison.
Several others also are named as defendants, including Dennis Cramm’s father, Dale Cramm, who owned the murder weapon and several other firearms that were staged around the property that day.
Holburn argued that Woodall hid the gun twice while watching Dennis Cramm fight with another young man. When gunfire erupted, Woodall ran like most of the others who gathered to watch the fistfight, she said.
“He didn’t want anyone to use it,” she told Cowsert. “He was surprised like everyone else that gunfire broke out that day.”
One of the attorneys for the dead men’s parents told Cowsert that putting the gun down where Woodall did was an invitation to disaster. The atmosphere was charged with tension, and firearms were placed in various locations in anticipation of the fight and trouble.
Lawyer Franklin Shoichet of Seattle called it a “fistfight where people were packing” guns and said that gunfire should have been anticipated.
It’s up to a jury to decide if Woodall exercised “reasonable care” in handling the dangerous weapon, Shoichet said.
“There were more red flags flying than in central Moscow during a Soviet May Day parade,” Shoichet told the judge. “This is a case of negligent placement of a firearm.”
Whether that’s true is up to a jury, Cowsert said. In his ruling, he said that someone possessing such dangerous items as firearms has a duty to exercise the highest degree of care in their placement.
Reporter Jim Haley: 425-339-3447 or haley@heraldnet.com.
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