CRIME SHOOT FIRST, SUE LATER

We’ve all heard stories like this before: burglar breaks neck while breaking in through a skylight, then sues company because of the dangerous skylight. Well, something similar is happening to the Belle Starr nightclub. Shortly before midnight two years ago. Steve Dietzman burst through the door of the saloon packing a shotgun and pistol. While a crowd of about 250 cringed under their tables, Dietzman shot bouncer Wesley Chamberlain and former bouncer Michael Crawford before then-owner Bill Pence emerged from his office and shot Dietzman three times.

The wounded Dietzman managed to get to his ear and drive off into the night, but crashed into an apartment complex a couple of miles away, where police found him. Dietzman-who had served seven years of a twenty-year sentence for burglary and was on parole for auto theft-was subsequently convicted and sentenced to serve 125 years in Huntsville.

Now, Dietzman has filed suit against the former owners and bouncers, who, he claims, caused “his judgment [to be) ruptured by outrage.” They made him mad, in other words. And he wants them to pay for what they did.

Dietzman maintains that he was innocently ordering some drinks when club manager Bruce Brister told him not to whistle or yell at the barmaid. Dietzman claims that Brister then struck him in the head, knocked him down, and got him in a choke hold. Then, according to the lawsuit, five club bouncers dragged him outside where they tore his clothes, busted his mouth and, thanks to the choke holds, gave him permanent neck trouble.

Former owner Pence is outraged by the suit, not only because his friends were injured, but because bad press forced him to sell the club. “I lost 50 percent of my revenue after the shooting,” he says. “Wesley Chamberlain almost died several times. The doctors say his life has been shortened by twenty years-and Dietzman thinks he’s the victim?”

Local personal injury attorneys were at first quick to dismiss the litigation as just another looney-tunes nuisance suit. But after considering the fact that Dietzman carefully worded his suit so that he’s suing the club for its behavior, and not for causing his, they give it slightly better odds. And a couple of local cases may provide some precedent. Grand Prairie attorney John Read was able to win a case for the survivors of Danny Lewis, a patron of a now-defunct honky-tonk who was stabbed during a dispute with bouncers. And Sam Pet-tigrew Jr., also of Grand Prairie, was awarded damages in a case against Billy Bob’s Texas in which he claimed he was mistreated by its bouncers.

But personal injury specialist Fred Misko doubts that Dietzman will prevail: “1 would think that any jury, in a sense of equity, would feel [Dietzman’s] retaliation was so inappropriate that it wiped out his claims.”