We hope that we are spearheading a movement to expose these egregious and unconstitutional laws for what they really are. They are an attack on our civil liberties. With these laws in place ordinary citizens are effectively barred by the exorbitant cost from bringing any civil action against sellers of firearms and ammunition.
Lonnie and Sandy Phillips
September 25, 2015
We Lost Our Daughter to a Mass Shooter and Now Owe $203,000 to His Ammo Dealer
[They believe the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is an attack on their civil liberties and is unconstitutional?
I only have a small inkling of they pain and suffering they are going through with the loss of their daughter. They have a tremendous amount of sympathy from me in regards to having their daughter murdered. But I’m not going to remain quiet when they go all crap for brains on us and confuse, in essence, up from down, black from white, and right from wrong.
They should be seeking the services of a grief counselor and not attempting to infringe upon the specific enumerated right to keep and bear arms.—Joe]
I hate to sound cold, but how is their loss a reason for me to suffer? It won’t bring the child back.
Sorry for your loss, BUT…… YOUR subsequent attack on someone else who had no real connection to the real criminal isn’t excused by your loss of a loved one.
How is this any different from somebody being wrong by somebody of African ancestry and then putting on a sheet and going after anybody with darker skin?
The truth is they were likely rabidly anti-gun while thier daughter was alive, and realized that the Brady campaign would pay them for easy work once their daughter was shot. The Bradies then used them to file a lawsuit they KNEW there was no hope of winning.
This is nothing but a tale of self centered “progressive ” behavior with a dead girl being used as leverage.
They knew there was no hope of winning. They were hoping to reduce — preferably to zero or below — Lucky Gunner’s bottom line by forcing them to defend a civil suit. The Bradys often get attorneys willing to work pro bono for the cause, so their “legal costs” are a few hundred dollars in filing fees.
The business model goes, “Spend a few hundred dollars to lose, cost your opponent a few hundred thousand dollars to win.”
However, they did NOT expect the judge to award LG ALL of their legal expenses. The Brady business model backfired spectacularly. We can only hope it continues to do so.
Sorry, that’s the first half of the Brady business model. The full thing goes:
“Spend a few hundred dollars to lose. Cost your opponent a few hundred thousand dollars to win. Announce to the MSM that you’re ‘taking the fight to the evil gun lobby’ and use the publicity to shake down your donors. Lather, rinse, repeat.”
I suspect most of thier former donors are more excited about giving to Bloomberg rather than Brady.
Hence why Colin Goddard now works for Bloomberg. Rats and sinking ships.
The pro bono part isn’t even all that necessary. If you have no intention of winning, you don’t have to put many hours into the case, so the model still works.
If they want some recourse for their murdered daughter, they should go after the Brady Bunch, who (I assume) duped them into believing that they had a winnable case. They should set loose the dogs of their outrage upon the attorneys who convinced them that somehow the gun dealer and ammo manufacturer had any meaningful role in the chain of events that lead to the Aurora shooting. Perhaps they could tilt after the windmill of gun-free zones. I sympathize with them wanting to lash out in their sorrow – and give them the benefit of the doubt in that they got sucked into this while not thinking clearly.
Or – perhaps they were anti-gun to begin with and didn’t need convincing. In which case, they can pound sand.
Debtor’s prison sounds good to me.
If their cause was so popular, it should be easy for them to set up a crowdfunding campaign to cover their legal bills. Right?
Are there any other examples of someone suing the manufacturer or retailer of a product because it was used by a criminal in the act of committing a crime?
Has Zippo been sued for contributing to an arson? Has Chicaho Cutlery been sued for contributing to a stabbing death? Is Wal Mart going to be sued for selling the wig and makeup to the guy who robbed a bank here a couple weeks ago? Would anyone believe that any such suit ever makes sense?
I like Weer’d Beard’s point; this is no different than blaming all black people, or all white people, for the actions of one scumbag. It may even be worse because they’re attacking not merely a group of people here and now, but a basic human right that applies to all people everywhere for all time.
Just today it was announced that Paul Walker’s daughter is suing Porsche for making a car that’s too fast. The driver was going 3x the legal speed limit when they crashed.
So yeah, that’s mindset exists outside of gun control somewhat. Hopefully Porsche holds firm and doesn’t settle and it gets dismissed in short order.
Also, as frivolous as the lawsuit is against Porsche, it is still leaps and bounds more legitimate than what the Bradys tried to do. Their argument is that Lucky Gunner should have done a background check on the buyer… which he would have passed.
I once drove six times the legal speed limit* in a 2-ton truck with a 292 cubic inch six cylinder engine.
*60 MPH in a 10 MPH zone. It was 10 MPH because of the “fresh” pavement earlier in the day. When it was hot tires would be sticky from the oil and pick up gravel which would be thrown into other vehicles. I was on the road at about 2:00 AM, the pavement had cooled, there was no gravel being thrown, and there were no other vehicles for miles.
Er….. Don’t you mean six times the legal limit?
Yes.
Fixed.
Thanks!
So… the total costs of a suit they initiated, that their attorneys should have told them they had no chance of winning, are “exorbitant” when they’re forced to pay…
And *only* when they are forced to pay, given they intended to foist court costs and other financial damages to “sellers of firearms and ammunition”.
Huh, people who intended to extort money, or at the very least cause financial hardship via legal fees… are complaining about the very law that made them fiscally culpable for their scheme.
What next? A loan shark complaining about how usury laws are putting him out of business?
See my reply to Weerd Beard above. They didn’t set out to win; they knew they wouldn’t. The goal isn’t to win; it’s to force LG to spend money they (hopefully) don’t have defending their completely lawful business practices. The Brady lawyers, being anti-gun themselves, are willing to work pro bono, so it costs the Bradys next-to-nothing.
The tactic backfired only when the judge ordered the plaintiffs to pay LG’s legal costs, but the long-term loss will be even greater: the Bradys will have a much harder time finding willing plaintiffs now that it’s known that losing the court case could mean losing everything.
Indeed why I said “they intended to foist court costs and other financial damages”, winning would be *nice* but it’s not their goal.
And they lie. Heck note their crocodile tears about being denied their day in court… when it was a judge that ruled against them.
They loose their daughter in July, 2012, and by January, 2013, he is a “Manager Organizing Department Brady Campaign” according to his LinkedIn profile. So he won’t go after them since they are his bread and butter now. Whatever. Sorry for your loss, but please STFU now.
https://www.linkedin.com/pub/lonnie-phillips/16/a/722
I do like the loaded use of the word ‘dealer’ as in ‘his ammo dealer’.
Taking control of language with an iron fist was a fantastic win for the control freaks.
Could have used “trafficker”.
“…you have an impenetrable barrier to using the judicial system to effect change in gun legislation in Colorado.”
And THEY complain about things being ‘unconstitutional’.
The justice system was never constitutionally meant to be used to “change legislation” only to interpret it and apply it to the case at hand. Their words are utter activist bullcrap and show everyone exactly who they really are. We’ve had to suffer this for too long and now that it seems the pendulum is finally swinging back in some ways the liberals can’t figure out whether to defecate or go blind.
“We believe that the judge’s decision was wrong, and that it is unconstitutional to financially punish people for bringing a lawsuit, especially a public interest case that did not seek a dime,” the Phillips wrote. “But rather than risk possibly being ordered to pay even more fees, we are changing our focus from going after these laws in the judicial branch (we have dropped our appeal) to getting them overturned on the legislative level.”
1, They’ve learned the lesson of “once burned, twice shy”….good. Punitive for them and Exemplary for others. I hope Lucky Gunner and the Judge make sure the Phillips pay the bill to the last penny.
2, Just my opinion, but this will bankrupt them. Their legislative efforts are nothing more than grandstanding for $$, just like other organizations that talk a game, live off donations, but actually do little or nothing. They’ve figured that if Mrs. Brady could do it, they can.
Maybe Bloomberg could bail them out. Or Hamas, or some other comrades of the Progressives in their war on liberty.
I personally think Brady will go bankrupt because of this, and I do see Bloomberg buying the name.
Bloomberg is doing all he can to remove his name from all his monolithic lobby groups, and this would be one that his name isn’t on the original charter.
I don’t see why they’re complaining. I mean, it should be pretty easy for them to write it off on their taxes as a work related expense, after all.
Basically, they want sympathy because the law on this case balanced the playing field in risk, and sanctioned them for a frivolous lawsuits.
Their piece is packed with lies.
Did people notice what Hillary said recently? Reportedly, she argued for (a) “universal background checks”, and (b) letting crime victims sue gun makers.
(a) is bad enough, but (b) is the really nasty one.
And she’s arguing for “universal background checks” in response to a shooting in a state that already has “universal background checks”.
“Do it again, only harder.”