[JAVA3D] Collision management

[FLINT, Matthew]

I am currently constructing a game with Java 3D in which a ball is bounced around in a court and smashes the bricks against the back wall.  Once the ball enters into collision with a brick, the brick is removed from the court using the function detach() of BranchGroup.  Both the ball and the bricks contain a behavior which detects a collision with another object.  The ball changes direction and the bricks are detached upon collision.  This works fine if the bricks are spaced more than 1 meter apart.  However, if this distance is less than 1 meter, the bricks enter into collision with each other infinitely thus clogging the behavior and not allowing the behavior to discern between a collision with another brick and a collision with the ball.  I was wondering if anyone else has encountered this type of problem before and had found a workable solution.  Is it possibly the scheduling bounds of the bricks or their collision bounds maybe?  Any suggestions would be most welcome.   Thanks, M Flint