## Facts

- Yoshihiro “Yoshi” Hattori, a 16-year-old Japanese exchange student in Baton Rouge, went with friend Webb Haymaker to attend a Halloween party on October 17, 1992.
- Unfamiliar with the neighborhood, they mistakenly approached a nearby residence, the Peairs home, believing it was the party location.
- The boys were in non-threatening costumes; Yoshi wore a white tuxedo-style costume and carried a camera.
- After they rang the doorbell, Bonnie Peairs saw them, became frightened, and told her husband Rodney Peairs to get his gun.
- Rodney Peairs retrieved a .44 Magnum revolver and went to the door as the boys began to walk away.
- When the door opened, Yoshi turned back and approached; Peairs yelled for him to “freeze,” and Yoshi continued forward while laughing and saying they were there for a party.
- Peairs shot Yoshi at close range, killing him; Peairs later claimed he believed his wife was in danger and that Yoshi might be armed, though he did not see a weapon.
- Yoshi’s parents filed wrongful death and survival claims; after a bench trial, the court found Peairs liable and awarded about $653,077.85.
- Peairs appealed, disputing liability, the rejection of self-defense, comparative fault, evidentiary rulings, and damages.

## Issues

1. Whether Peairs’s use of deadly force was justified as self-defense under Louisiana law requiring a genuine and objectively reasonable fear of death or great bodily harm.
2. Whether the shooting constituted an intentional tort in the absence of legal justification.
3. Whether comparative fault should be assigned to Yoshi or Webb for approaching the wrong house and for Yoshi’s conduct during the encounter.
4. Whether excluding Peairs’s proposed expert testimony on the reasonableness of his fear and response was reversible error.
5. Whether the damages award for wrongful death and survival claims was an abuse of discretion.

## Decision

- The court of appeal affirmed the judgment for the Hattoris.
- It held Peairs’s use of deadly force was not justified because any fear, even if sincere, was objectively unreasonable on the facts.
- It treated the shooting as an intentional tort because Peairs deliberately fired without legal justification.
- It found no basis to allocate comparative fault to Yoshi or Webb.
- It found no reversible error in excluding expert testimony on the reasonableness of Peairs’s actions.
- It upheld the damages award as within the trial court’s discretion.

## Legal Principles

- Civil self-defense requires both subjective fear and an objectively reasonable belief that deadly force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm.
- An intentional shooting is an intentional tort unless a legally valid justification applies; rejection of self-defense leaves the intentional act actionable.
- Comparative fault is not assigned where the plaintiff’s conduct did not legally provoke the violence or make the harm reasonably foreseeable under the circumstances.
- Expert testimony may be excluded when it would not assist the fact-finder in evaluating ordinary reasonableness based on observable facts.
- Appellate review of general damages is deferential; an award is upheld absent abuse of discretion.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed civil liability for the homeowner’s fatal shooting of an unarmed exchange student who mistakenly approached the wrong house, holding that subjective fear did not justify deadly force without objective reasonableness, rejecting comparative fault, and sustaining the trial court’s evidentiary rulings and damages award.


Hattori v. Peairs, 662 So. 2d 509 (La. Ct. App. 1st Cir. 1995)