I Say Good Move

Bushmaster Moves the political stunt Newtown lawsuit to Federal Court.

Gun maker Remington has moved a lawsuit by families of those shot in the Sandy Hook school massacre from state to federal court, where at least one expert says it has less chance of succeeding.

Nine families sued Remington and others in Bridgeport Superior Court in December arguing the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle used in the shooting should not have been sold for civilian use because of its overwhelming firepower. A 10th family joined the lawsuit adding a wrongful death claim.

The case was placed before U.S. District Judge Robert Chatigny last week after Remington argued that since it is located in North Carolina and not Connecticut, federal court was a more proper jurisdiction.

Timothy Lytton, a professor at the Albany Law School who has written extensively about suing the gun industry, said getting the case into the 2nd U.S. Circuit, of which Connecticut is a part, is a victory for the defendants.

“The 2nd Circuit has previously refused to hold gun manufacturers liable or permit lawsuits against gun manufacturers for injuries caused by third parties,” he said. “It has a history of knocking these types of cases down.”

A 2005 federal law shields gun manufacturers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products, but it does include an exception for cases where companies should know a weapon is likely to be used in a way that risks injury to others.

Experts have been saying that this case stands no chance, I suspect this move makes chances of dismissal or a win for Bushmaster higher IMHO.

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7 Responses to I Say Good Move

  1. Archer says:

    The case is ridiculous on its face. Even a cursory look at the facts reveal that, in addition to the PLCAA protections:
    – Bushmaster didn’t sell the rifle – they transferred it to a distributor (note that at this early stage, it’s already out of Bushmaster’s reasonable ability to control), who transferred it to a store, where it was purchased legally; and,
    – Even if the Newtown shooter, Adam Lanza, had purchased the rifle himself, he had a clean criminal background and would have passed the required NICS check; BUT,
    – The rifle was not purchased by Adam Lanza, but rather by his mother, for the completely lawful purpose of target shooting.

    There are a staggering number of steps (degrees of separation) between Remington/Bushmaster and the Sandy Hook tragedy, and up until the murder of the mother, all of them were lawful. Every. Single. One. For any other product than a gun, there would be no chance of a lawsuit succeeding, even without protections like the PLCAA. But this one is being allowed to continue, because “Gun!”

    (Then again, IANAL, but it seems possible to me that Remington/Bushmaster could have filed for a prima facie dismissal instead of a change of venue to the Federal courts, but didn’t because they believe they have a stronger case and want a definite verdict entered. They might even be able to find out exactly who is driving/funding this via the discovery stage of a counter-suit.)

    • Jake says:

      I think they’re trying to argue that Bushmaster is liable not because of any connection to the killer, but because the rifle in question is too dangerous for the civilian market period – i.e., the rifle is a product too dangerous for sale to anyone without the correct magical government fairy dust sprinkled on them, regardless of the legality of doing so, and therefore Bushmaster is liable for all dangerous and/or illegal acts performed with them by civilian actors.

      • Archer says:

        I can understand that point, but if that’s the case, why only Bushmaster?* There are literally hundreds of companies who manufacture AR-15-style rifles, and thousands who make individual and after-market components for them.

        You could build the same argument for the manufacturers of swimming pools, or Clorox, or dishwasher detergent gel packs, etc.

        It’s only a small step on that logical path to claim that any time a Honda Accord (still the #1 stolen model of car in America) is stolen and used for other crimes, or someone is injured/killed in a wreck with a stolen Accord, Honda should be liable for a) making cars that are capable of injuring/killing people, and b) continuing to build cars that are (relatively) easy to steal. And there should be an outcry of support for new “common-sense crime-prevention” laws mandating full registration and licensing of every person who owns and drives a Honda Accord (oh, wait….).

        —–
        * – Rhetorical question: Because “Gun!”, that’s why.

  2. Jack/OH says:

    Y’know, my head is trying to wrap itself around that phrase: “honoring the dead”. Compensation for wrongful action is usually a good thing. You need to be careful about assigning culpability, though.

    Who killed those kids at Newtown? Machinists? Bullet makers? Copper miners, lead miners?

    I live in a part of NE Ohio that’s occasionally the home of awful violence. My Mom once defended herself with a cheesy .22LR revolver back in the 1960s.

    The only “entity” responsible for the Newtown slayings is Mr. Adam Lanza. No one else. The dead are not “honored” by this BS suit.

  3. The legal point made by the plaintiffs will obviously be that “deadly weapons” have no legitimate use in a peaceful society.

    However, attempting to establish that ours is a “peaceful society” will be problematic.

    A reasonable rejoinder might be that this SHOULD be a “peaceful society”, and that making these weapons unavailable to the common citizenry should be, even if it is not, a useful first step toward the proposed Nirvana.

    The salient point is two-fold:
    First, that the Second Amendment accepts that there is a legitimate purpose in making firearms readily available to honest citizens;

    Second, when firearms are stolen FROM people who meet the qualification of “honest citizen”, and especially when all reasonable efforts have been made to secure them (see: “LOCKED UP IN A GUN SAFE!”) … then the acquisition by illegal means negates all responsibility by the legitimate purchaser.

    Legal restrictions can only go so far; when a weapon has been acquired illegally, this is at least three steps removed from the responsible actions of the manufacturer:
    (1) it has been transferred (wholesale) to legitimate Federal Firearms Licensee;
    (2) it has been transferred (retail) to a legitimate firearms owner;
    (3) that it has NOT been legitimately transferred to the final felon: Adam Lanza. In fact, several felonies (murder, theft, breaking and entering) have been violated before the firearm came into the possession of the final felon.

    Quite apart from the “Protection of Lawful merchandise” (I might have the nomenclature wrong) law, at least three laws have been violated before the weapon came into the possession of the Final Felon.

    Obviously, the manufacturer has diligently obeyed laws applicapable; the retailer obeyed all laws; the purchaser obeyed all laws.

    The only one who did NOT obey ANY laws was the “final felon”, who committed a plenitude of crimes before he went on to commit his most heinous of crimes … the murder of innocents.

    The Legislature, the Manufacturer, the Wholesaler, the Retailer and the Purchaser of the weapon obeyed every applicable law.

    We can sympathize with the survivors of the Newton victims who only want to punish someone for their great loss. But we cannot sympathize with their goal to punish all OTHER innocents in their drive for retribution.

    In my heart, I do not believe that they are hoping for remuneration. I do believe they are making this extreme effort to remove all weapons from the hands of others who might again commit such heinous crimes.

    They are misguided, at worst. They are sentencing themselves to disillusionment, at best. In their own interest, they might consider resolving their personal loss by some means which does not include retribution.

    In all honesty, if I were one of their number and my children/grandchildren were among the victims, I might believe that my own best course to solace would be to take what ever steps necessary to insure that no other families need suffer such horrible loss.

    But they will only be further harmed when the courts determine that their suit has no merit .. however much we all would wish to help them find some small degree of solace.

  4. WallPhone says:

    > where at least one expert says it has less chance of succeeding.

    What a useless and fallacious phrase, almost as if placed soley to incite rage in the casual reader. At least one british ‘medical expert’ says that vaccines cause autism, but that doesn’t make it any more true.

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