“Convicted thief sues store he robbed”

Scott Thomas Zielinski was shot while robbing Nick’s Short Stop Party Store in Clinton Township, Michigan, at knifepoint, and is serving an 8-to-22 year sentence. Now he’s suing the store’s owner and some of its clerks for in excess of $125,000 for pain and suffering and emotional distress. [WXYZ] More: reader VMS recalls the story of an unrepaired stair tread.

10 Comments

  • If there’s a sane judge presiding, the world record should be set for “case dismissed”.

  • What particularly bothers me in this case is that a lawyer took it on for the plaintiff. Did he advise his client that there’s good (or any) chance to win this case? Why did he take it on?

  • Why an attorney would take on the case–unless he were facing starvation, that is–and why a court would hear it are two questions for which there can be no reasonable answer.

  • Why did Geofrey Fieger represent Dr. Jack (aka Dr. Death)? Why does an attorney represent those clients that are sure losers? Publicity. Any press is good press. Did not say that this would work, in fact, it may back fire. But that, is what, I think is what is going on.

  • […] story (via Overlawyered) illustrates why you should not doubt me. Zeilinski is serving an 8-22 year sentence for the […]

  • Watch the SOB win.

  • He is suing for pain, suffering and emotional distress. Seems to me he might have caused those same conditions in the people he threatened in the store.

  • My sixth grade teacher, 39 years ago, was sued by a burglar who broke his leg inside her house under the following circumstances:

    For months she had been hounding her husband to fix the broken tread on the stairs so that she, her husband and her kids would not have to step over it and risk injury. Of course his resposne each time was “I’ll get around to it.”

    One day, when the family came home from an evening out, there was a burglar at the bottom of the stairs with a multiple compound fracture of his leg. He was arrested, charged, and convicted of burglary. He sued, but the courts were smarter in those days. Case dismissed.

  • The lesson here is to always shoot to kill, and give yourself time to remove any video recording systems before you call the police to report such an incident.

    Or maybe that’s not what the aggressor-turned-plaintiff intends us to understand…

  • Doug,

    Geofrey Fieger successfully represented Dr. Kevorkian several time. The doctor lost when he represented himself and asked the jury “Do I look like a murderer?”

    Dr. Kervorkian’s patient was a good man of sound mind who did not want to drown in his own spittle. The judge, a beautiful woman, used the guilty verdict to voice her tyrannical view that Doctor Kervorkian defied the state!

    The case against the doctor was straight forward; he did willfully cause the death of the patient. What is tragic is that is that nobody thought it was murder. If it was, then every letter to Dr, Kervokian that began “Please help my grandpa…”, ” Please help my Aunt Ester…”, Please help my husband, Herb…”, etc would be a solicitation of murder. None were so prosecuted. Indeed the family of thr murdered patient provided support, materially and psycologically for the murder. The family was not prosecuted.

    Doctor Kervorkian’s prosecution was one of too many dark moments in American Law.