Congratulations to John Giadies and Mike Joynes on both settling a 6 figure case this month for one of our clients. Unfortunately due to confidentiality clauses in both cases we can not provide any additional details. In either event we want to thank both Mike and John for a job well done!By Duane Bourne
The Virginian-Pilot
VIRGINIA BEACH - The father of one of two teens killed in a March crash that police say was caused by a drunken driver has filed a $10 million lawsuit against a restaurant that served the man alcohol and allowed him to drive.
In the lawsuit, David Kunhardt claimed that Ensenada Mexican Restaurant failed to protect Alison Kunhardt from imminent danger and essentially acted as Alfredo Ramos' accomplice for not stopping the events that killed his daughter and her close friend.
"Ensenada knowingly participated and furthered this crime by continuing to serve him alcohol and is equally responsible," according to the suit.
Filed in Circuit Court on Friday on behalf of Alison Kunhardt's estate, the lawsuit requests a jury trial and compensatory damages of more than $7 million. Attorney Louis Joynes II did not return two telephone calls seeking comment.
"Ramos was being served alcohol, and he is only half responsible," David Kunhardt said Monday. "This is going to be a tough fight."
Alison Kunhardt, 17, and Tessa Tranchant, 16, were killed shortly after 10 p.m. on March 30 when a Mitsubishi plowed into the back of their Plymouth as they waited for a green light at Kings Grant Road and Virginia Beach Boulevard.
Ramos was charged with aggravated involuntary manslaughter following the crash and is scheduled to appear in Virginia Beach Juvenile & Domestic Relations Court on June 26.
Police said a combination of speed and alcohol led to the crash. Ramos has a history of alcohol-related convictions in Virginia Beach and Chesapeake, which were misdemeanors. That record includes a conviction this year for drunken driving in Chesapeake.
The 22-year-old man born in Mexico of Guatemalan parents also is in the country illegally.
Ramos' immigration status and questions of why his previous convictions did not result in his deportation fueled a nationwide furor over illegal immigration. One television personality called Virginia Beach a "sanctuary" for illegal immigrants.
The lawsuit also alleges that Ramos, a waiter at another Mexican restaurant near his home on Bonney Road, had already committed the crime of being drunk in public because he was intoxicated before he arrived at Ensenada.
Workers at the restaurant have said they knew Ramos was intoxicated. But employees continued to sell him alcohol for three hours, although he could not present proper identification, the suit said.
Although the restaurant has denied the allegations, David Kunhardt said witnesses have alleged Ramos was drinking there.
"If somebody is already drunk, they should not serve them," David Kunhardt said. "They should get them a cab."
When reached at the restaurant, manager Rogelio Perez declined to comment on pending litigation.
The Associated Press© March 23, 2011
By Dena Potter
RICHMOND
A former German diplomat's son who is serving life in prison for killing two people is hoping new evidence will win his parole. Meanwhile, the woman convicted of helping him kill her parents maintains they are both guilty and belong in prison.
On Monday, an attorney for Jens Soering mailed Gov. Bob McDonnell the sworn statement of a Lynchburg man who says Elizabeth Haysom and another man brought a bloody car into his transmission shop months after her parents were killed in 1985. In the documents and in an interview, Tony Buchanan says he has attempted to tell others about the visit over the years, but nothing came of it.
Buchanan's statement is the latest in a series of new evidence Soering's attorneys have produced in an attempt to win his freedom.
Last month, they sent McDonnell a 2009 DNA test on decades-old biological evidence from the scene of the fatal stabbing that excluded both Soering and Haysom as suspects. Experts have said the DNA tests are not proof of innocence.
Long out of appeals, Soering is asking McDonnell to parole him and deport him back to Germany.
He came close to returning there last year when former Gov. Timothy M. Kaine approved a request days before he left office to transfer Soering to a German prison, where he could have been free after two years. McDonnell rescinded that approval when he took office, and the federal government refused the transfer.
Soering said he understands that granting him a pardon would be politically unpopular, which is why he's asking only to be paroled and sent home. He has been eligible for parole since 2003.
"I am not trying to make any more of a nuisance of myself than I absolutely have to," said Soering, 44, in an interview at Buckingham Correctional Center in Dillwyn. "I need to go home. I know I didn't do this. I don't need Virginia to tell me I didn't do it."
In a letter to the AP from Haysom, who has declined media interviews since being sentenced to 90 years in prison for her role in the slaying of her parents, she said Soering's claims that he is innocent are false.
"He is right to blame me. I involved him in a horrible crime," Haysom said. "The bottom line, however, is that we are equally responsible for the murder of my parents. And we both deserve incarceration."
Soering and Haysom met as honors students at the University of Virginia. Months after Derek and Nancy Haysom were stabbed and nearly decapitated in their Bedford County home, police closed in on the pair. They fled the country, traveling around Europe before being arrested in London.
Both confessed, but Soering later said he only did so because he thought he had diplomatic immunity through his father and wanted to save Haysom from the death penalty.
She pleaded guilty and testified against Soering. Soering fought extradition for three years before returning for a sensational, televised trial in which he was convicted in 1990 and sentenced to two life terms.
In prison, Soering has written books proclaiming his innocence and gathered international support for his release.
Haysom said Soering's "drive and intensity were once very attractive to me," but she said they are both guilty.
"I am fully aware of the layers of my guilt, of my culpability, of betrayals to my family and to Jens," Haysom wrote. "If he were innocent, if he were in any way not guilty, I would shout it from the roof tops."
Buchanan has his doubts. The 69-year-old believes another man helped Haysom kill her parents.
A few months after the murders, a car was towed to his shop about 10 to 15 miles away from the Haysoms' home. Buchanan said there was dried blood in the driver's side floorboard and a knife with what appeared to be dried blood on the console between the front seats. The car's undercarriage was covered with grass and mud and appeared to have been sitting in the woods for a while, he remembers.
An avid hunter, Buchanan said he assumed the blood was from a deer someone had killed.
Weeks later a young woman and man came to pick up the vehicle, a later model, light-colored car similar to a Nova or Camero. She tried to pay with a credit card, but it was initially declined. She made a call to the bank and another call to someone in Florida, then the card was accepted, he said.
Buchanan didn't think much of it until a few months later when he saw Haysom's picture in media reports, which also mentioned a man being involved in the murders. Thinking police had their killers, Buchanan said he didn't feel the need to report what he had seen.
"As far as I was concerned, they already had the people, had the goods on them, tied up in a tight bow," he said.
It wasn't until he saw a picture of Soering upon his conviction that he felt the wrong man was convicted, he said. Soering was a small man with thick glasses and dark hair. The man with Haysom was a clean-cut, tall man with lighter hair and no glasses, Buchanan said.
"I really thought that whoever was in my shop had something to do with it," he said. "I know it wasn't Soering."
Buchanan said over the years he has told his story to Soering's appeal attorney, the judge in the case and, a few months ago, to police, but nothing has come of it.
Bedford County Sheriff's Maj. Ricky Gardner, the lead investigator in the case, said he never talked to Buchanan. He said he's sure Buchanan believes he's doing the right thing, but that all other evidence points to Soering as the murderer.
"He has convinced himself that he didn't do it," Gardner said of Soering.
Buchanan said he wishes he would have come forward sooner. He's not sure if Soering is innocent, but he believes there's enough doubt that he should be sent back to Germany.
In a letter to McDonnell, Soering's attorney Gail Ball points to the new evidence and the DNA tests as grounds for his parole.
"As a former Commonwealth's Attorney, you know that no jury would have convicted Mr. Soering under these circumstances," she writes to McDonnell.
McDonnell's spokesman says the governor is reviewing the information.
Soering says he will continue to fight for his release. Haysom spends her days training dogs and transcribing textbooks into Braille at Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women.
"I have a much better life than I probably deserve and I am grateful," she said.
By RICHMOND
Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli has endured his share of criticism for some of the legal fights he's picked as the state's top prosecutor.
Now he's getting grief for not joining a particular courtroom battle.
Cuccinelli has declined to join in a free-speech case heading to the U.S. Supreme Court that stems from a protest by anti-gay activists at a 2006 funeral for a Marine killed while serving in Iraq. As "vile" as the protesters' methods are, banning them could set a precedent that would infringe on the rights of countless other protesters, from environmentalists to anti-abortion advocates, Cuccinelli's spokesman said.
Virginia is one of two states - Maine is the other - that hasn't joined the case, which has attracted bipartisan support from powerful lawmakers on Capitol Hill, according to an attorney for the family of the slain Marine.
The case stems from a protest at the March 2006 funeral of Marine Lance Cpl. Matthew Snyder by a church congregation from Topeka, Kan.
Westboro Baptist Church members believe the deaths of American servicemen and women are divine punishment for the nation's policies toward gays and lesbians. Church members frequently protest at military funerals. At Snyder's service in Maryland, participants waved signs with anti-gay slogans such as "Thank God for Dead Soldiers" and "Semper Fi Fags," according to court records.
Snyder's father, Albert, filed a lawsuit that alleged that church founder Fred Phelps and other protesters caused him emotional distress, defamed his son's name and invaded the family's privacy. A jury in a Maryland federal court awarded him millions in damages.
That verdict, and the award, was overturned when the U.S. 4th Circuit Court of Appeals in Richmond ordered Snyder to pay Phelps' legal bill and ruled that as inflammatory as the church's message is, it is protected speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution.
And that's essentially Cuccinelli's take.
Cuccinelli's spokesman Brian Gottstein said in a statement that there is potential peril in setting "a precedent that could severely curtail certain valid exercises of free speech."
That rationale is unacceptable to Sean E. Summers, a Pennsylvania attorney representing Snyder.
"There's only one side of this issue to be on," he said, "and apparently the Virginia attorney general is on the wrong side of it."
Not everyone has criticized Cuccinelli, who has an unlikely ally: the ACLU of Virginia.
"In order to protect all free speech, you sometimes have to protect despicable speech," said Kent Willis, executive director of the state ACLU, which has opposed Cuccinelli on other matters, including his quest to obtain the research records on climate change of a former University of Virginia professor.
At question in the protests of the military funerals are the "conflicting interests" of free speech and privacy rights, said University of Richmond law professor Carl Tobias, who predicted the Supreme Court will uphold the appellate court decision.
Virginia has a law that "balances free speech rights while stopping and even jailing those who would be so contemptible as to disrupt funeral or memorial services," Gottstein said in a statement, referring to a statute that defines disorderly conduct in public places.
That law was updated in 2006 to include funerals and memorial services. The change was made in anticipation of pickets by Phelps and his followers, said Del. Charles W. "Bill" Carrico, a Grayson County Republican who successfully carried that legislation.
Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, julian.walker@pilotonline.com