In 2013, an eight-person federal jury in Los Angeles unanimously found against the Culver City, Calif., police department in the wrongful-death shooting of robbery suspect LeJoy Grissom, awarding $8.8 million in damages to the man’s family.

I represented one of LeJoy Grissom’s children, and the situation was eerily similar to the shooting of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo. What happened in Grissom’s case provides a road map to the critical questions that likely will arise in the Brown case.