One of the most eye-opening aspects of the civil trial in which David Jungerman was found liable for shooting a homeless man is the amount of the judgment the Jackson County Circuit Court jury awarded the victim: $5.75 million.
The jury first considered compensatory damages and awarded Jeffrey Harris, who lost a leg because of the shooting, $750,000 — a significant sum by itself.
But then, after additional testimony in the second phase of the trial, the jury came back with a whopping $5 million judgement for punitive damages. As the term implies, a punitive award is meant to punish someone for wrongdoing.
I think there are three main reasons for the huge award:
First, Harris’ lead attorney, Thomas Pickert, must have done an outstanding job of presenting evidence and exposing Jungerman’s recklessness. (Pickert, of course, was murdered a day after court officials notified Jungerman some of his property would be seized and sold to satisfy the jury award.)
Second, Jungerman chose to represent himself, with help from a lawyer, rather than paying a lawyer to handle the case top to bottom, start to finish.
Third, Jungerman came off as arrogant and remorseless.
Of those three points, the third merits the most analysis.
Arrogance:
Before the trial, Pickert deposed Jungerman, that is, took sworn testimony from him, a common procedure. In the deposition, Pickert observed that Jungerman fired five times and struck Harris with three bullets from an assault rifle.
To that, Jungerman replied: “That’s pretty good from the hip isn’t it? That’s lucky shooting, isn’t it?”
I’m not 100 percent sure that exchange got into the court record during the trial, but I assume it did. And it certainly would have had an impact on the jury.
I know for sure the jury heard testimony about two other incidents involving Jungerman and guns. Less than a month after shooting Harris and a companion at a building he owns in northeast Kansas City, Jungerman shot two other men he caught there stealing copper. And many years ago, he held four youths at gunpoint after catching them trespassing on lake property he owns in Raytown. So, the jury was well aware of his unilateral, vigilante way of dealing with trespassers.
Lack of remorse:
The transcript from the final day of trial testimony indicates Jungerman never apologized for shooting Harris on Sept. 25. 2012 at the northeast Kansas City building where Jungerman manufactures baby high chairs.
At one point during the final day of trial, Pickert asked Jungerman if he had ever told Harris he was sorry for the shooting, which resulted in Harris having a leg amputated above the knee. This exchange followed:
Jungerman: “If he hadn’t chose to commit to trespass on my property and hid around the building, he would have never got shot. He chose to be where he was. I chose to defend myself. So that’s the end of it.”
Pickert: “You’re not at all sorry for what you did to Mr. Harris, are you?”
Jungerman: “I was forced to do it.”
A while later, Brian Gepford, the attorney who was helping Jungerman, attempted to extract some semblance of an apology from Jungerman.
Gepford: “In no way whatsoever did you want the kind of outcome either for yourself or for Mr. Harris that resulted from what happened in 2012, did you?”
Jungerman: “No, no. I certainly had no intentions of injuring someone like that…And it was a situation that happened, like I’ve indicated, in a matter of seconds. And I certainly — there was never the intent to injure someone like that. The intent was to protect myself from being injured.”
**
Astonishingly, Jungerman not only refused to apologize, he actually attempted to paint himself as the true victim.
Questioned by Gepford about how much the lawsuit had affected his life, Jungerman replied:
“Tremendously. Since I was sued by these people, they are trying to take away a good portion of what I’ve worked and saved for over the years…And basically — basically, I have been murdered all of the years since 2014 because this thing has been over my head and I couldn’t think about running my business, et cetera, et cetera.”
Interesting choice of words, wouldn’t you agree — “murdered”?
JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC 
One of the reasons you have an attorney represent you is simply to prevent the jury from finding out what an asshole you really are. Take for instance the two Menendez boys who shot their parents. During the first trial their attorney had them dress up in sweaters instead of suits, making them look more like those nice kids next door and they worked at dividing the jury along gender lines. As a result the women on the first jury voted for acquittal while the men voted for a guilty verdict.
In Jungerman’s case, he is clearly not a charismatic figure and the last thing he needs is to provide a jury with daily evidence of why they should hate the very sight of him.
Good assessment, John…And right you are, charismatic he is not!