Tommy Lee gets trial date in pool party wrongful-death suit

Tommy Lee will go to court to defend himself against a wrongful-death suit filed by the parents of a boy who drowned in the drummer’s swimming pool in June 2001. According to E!, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Richard Neidorf ruled Monday that the suit, filed in February, should go to trial on April 2.

Four-year-old Daniel Karven-Veres was attending a birthday party for Lee and Pamela Anderson’s son Brandon when he drowned in the ex-Motley Crue drummer’s pool. The suit, filed by parents Ursula Karven and James Veres, seeks unspecified damages and accuses Lee of general negligence, negligent supervision, and wrongful death, claiming that no adults were supervising the pool when Daniel drowned. Moreover, the suit says, the boy might have been saved if anyone at the house had been trained in CPR or first aid. Lee has not commented on the suit, though he issued a statement at the time of the drowning, calling it a ”tragic accident” and saying he was ”devastated.” According to TV’s ”Celebrity Justice,” Lee’s attorney, Philip Weiss, has responded to the suit by saying that the parents ”failed to exercise ordinary” care of their child, and that they knew the conditions that existed at Lee’s home. Weiss notes that Karven and Veres did not sue the nanny or the babysitter who oversaw the child that day, only Lee. Apparently, Weiss says, the plaintiffs targeted Lee because he has a ”deep pocket.”