By M.S. ENKOJI
Sacramento Bee
Monday, October 08, 2007
A California man whose wife died in his arms after a freak paintball gun accident is returning to court because he says his fight for consumer safety isn't done.
"I will not stop until there is good public warning out there. I'm going to keep fighting the fight," said Mark Contois, whose wife, Colette, died when a metal canister from a paintball gun rocketed into her during her son's 10th birthday party in 2004.
Contois, 44, filed a lawsuit in Contra Costa County (Calif.) Superior Court last week against a New Jersey paintball supply company, claiming it hadn't fulfilled its pledge to warn the public.
Contois, a child-protection worker, had settled an initial wrongful death lawsuit in 2006 for about $8 million against companies involved in making the paintball equipment, according to his attorney, Peter Hinton of Walnut Creek, Calif.
Part of the settlement -- a crucial part for Contois -- was the company's agreement to issue safety warnings on its Web site and to consumers through its retailers, Hinton said.
National Paintball Supply, the original company, has been sold to Kee Action Sports, which has not complied with that part of the agreement, Hinton said.
A spokesman for Kee said the company had not seen the lawsuit and would not immediately comment.
Contois is concerned about the safety of others using the equipment, even though some design changes have been made since then, Hinton said. "But there's hundreds and thousands of units out there that haven't been" modified and are still in use.
Contois is pressing for more safety awareness, which, he says, wasn't there for his wife.
Colette Contois, a 37-year-old teacher, had researched paintball shooting when her son requested an outing for his birthday, said her husband.
The mostly younger teenage boys who play -- 5 million, according to one national survey -- shoot paintballs from pressurized guns at each other to score points.
The safety issues Colette Contois saw online, she believed, could be resolved with the right equipment.
What she didn't know is that a 15-year-old Olympia, Wash., boy had died in 2003 from the same accident that would kill her, Mark Contois said.
If she had seen the circumstances of the boy's death, she never would have agreed to the paintball outing, he said.
"If we knew then what we know now, we wouldn't be here," he said. "I'm not against paintball, but people have a right to know. My drive is to save one life."
At the birthday party, after the group of boys was done, a 16-year-old boy standing a few steps away from Colette Contois had begun to take his gun apart and accidentally unscrewed the pressurized carbon dioxide canister that powers the gun. The canister, about the size of a wine bottle, propelled into Colette Contois as her husband and son watched.
Contois has since started a Web site of his own, paintballdangers.com, where he posts information about injuries and other safety issues. He also details his wife's death and that of the 15-year-old Washington boy.
His attorney said there have been eight injuries since 1990 involving paintball equipment, and two deaths.
"I would say that is two deaths too many," Mark Contois said.
(Contact M.S. Enkoji at menkoji(at)sacbee.com. For more stories visit scrippsnews.com)
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