Attorney: Complex should pay for wrongs
By DONG-PHUONG NGUYEN
Published December 15, 2004
TAMPA - Three years after Lai Chau was abducted from the parking lot of her apartment complex, driven around town and then shot three times in the head, her lawyer told a jury Tuesday that owners of the complex should pay for failing to protect her and warn her of the gated community's crime problems.
Chau's lawyer, Lyann Goudie, said during closing arguments that the complex's owner, Southstar Equity, and property manager, Brookside Properties, were guilty of negligence and fraud and that Chau should be paid at least $11.6-million for pain and suffering, medical bills and lost future earnings. She also asked them to consider punitive damages.
"She will never be the same because they put their tenants in harm's way," Goudie said.
She mentioned Remington Apartment Homes' broken security gates, unmonitored alarms and lack of adequate lighting and said apartment managers and leasing agents had a "legal obligation" to warn their residents of the crime in the area.
However, Billy Gunn, the lawyer representing the complex on 30th Street, argued that his clients did everything they could to protect their residents, and accused Chau's lawyers of hijacking the case.
Chau's attorneys, who work for the high-profile law firm of powerhouse lawyer Barry Cohen, sent her to medical experts that they use for many of their cases, Gunn said.
"Whose case is this?" he asked.
The experts testified that Chau suffers from post traumatic stress disorder.
Gunn suggested that Chau's mental disorder could also have been caused by personal family trauma that occurred in her youth.
Gunn scoffed at Goudie's figure of damages, telling jurors if they felt the need to put a price tag on Chau's loss, it might be in the $500,000 to $600,000 range.
"The crime there, while unfortunately high, was not unusually high for the area," Gunn said.
Of his clients, he said: "They're not crooks. They don't prey on college students to put money in their pockets."
Jurors will begin deliberations this morning. They must decide if the apartment community owners and operators committed negligence and fraud stemming from the Dec. 13, 2001, incident.
That night, Chau drove her pink Acura into the complex at 10610 N 30th St. shortly after 11 p.m. and parked near her first-floor apartment. She was about to get out when two men ran toward her. One pointed a gun at her head and told her to move into the passenger seat, she later said.
They drove her to Forest Hills Elementary School on N Ola Street. There, Jabari "J.B." Armstrong shot Chau three times in the head.
Armstrong is serving a life sentence. Tobaris Arrington, who also took part in the abduction, is serving a 17-year prison term. A third participant, Anthony Smith, was sentenced to seven years in prison.