The Brady Center filed a lawsuit today:
Brady Center Files Lawsuit Against Gun Manufacturer and Dealer For Parents of Boy Killed in Unintentional Shooting
Lawsuit Alleges Gun Did Not Include Safety Feature That Would Have Prevented Shooting
The parents of 13-year old J.R. Gustafson brought suit today against Springfield Arms and Saloom Department Store in Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania, outside Pittsburgh. J.R. was killed on March 20, 2016 in an unintentional shooting by a boy who thought the gun was unloaded after the gun’s magazine had been removed. The lawsuit alleges that the gun should have included safety features that would have prevented the shooting, and J.R.’s death.
It appears they are trying to sneak through a clause in the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. The law gives qualified civil liability to manufacturers or distributors for the criminal acts of a third party. But it’s not clear to me (I am not a lawyer) that it extends to careless, negligent, and/or ignorant actors:
A) IN GENERAL.—The term ‘‘qualified civil liability action’’ means a civil action or proceeding or an administrative proceeding brought by any person against a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product, or a trade association, for damages, punitive damages, injunctive or declaratory relief, abatement, restitution, fines, or penalties, or other relief, resulting from the criminal or unlawful misuse of a qualified product by the person or a third party…
Are there any lawyers who want to comment on the viability of this lawsuit?
Whose gun was it? The parents’ ? If so, I’d go in arguing that the plaintiffs were grossly negligent.
if they get it wrong again, we all know they will leave the family of the dead kid holding the bag.
Yeah, I’m astonished anyone would involve themselves with Brady after the LuckyGunner suit collapsed, and they stuck the couple with the bill.
The Mainstream Media did their best to suppress that fact. I only heard it here.
IANAL, but I do own a Springfield pistol. I imagine they’re suing over the lack of a “magazine disconnect”, which is a “feature” of (IMO) questionable utility that prevents the gun from firing without a magazine inserted. My Springfield lacks this “feature”.
However, printed on the slide, in neat block letters, is a “WARNING” that the gun can still discharge with the magazine removed. IIRC, the warning is repeated (repeatedly!) in the owner’s manual.
But being printed on the gun itself would seem to absolve both the manufacturer and the seller of any liability over this incident.
At least, that’s my understanding, and again, IANAL.
The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) is a United States law which protects firearms manufacturers and dealers from being held liable when crimes have been committed with their products.
This lawsuit has no basis. The ONLY valid reason to bring suit against a firearm manufacturer is if there can be shown that the firearm was physically defective and that defect caused the harm. This law also protects those who sell firearms as a licensed dealer. If the sale was legal than the vendor is protected. The libtard left constantly files these lawsuits…..and they are usually tossed. On rare occasions a commie judge allows the suit to proceed…..and if successful it’s overturned on appeal by a higher court based on the PLCAA law. But these types of lawsuits will ALWAYS be filed because it’s one of the methods the left uses in it’s assault on 2A rights….the ‘death by a thousand cuts’ method. They might lose these cases a thousand times but if they win even ONCE they’ve gained ground. Thus they NEVER ENDING efforts to destroy gun rights. Because if they lose 99.9% of the time and we lose only .1% of the time EVENTUALLY THEY WIN….entirely. And THAT is the agenda. This is why we
need tort reform to force the plaintiffs and their attorneys to bear ALL costs for such frivolous lawsuits. Such reform would cut WAY down on the insanity we call
“Civil Court Law”.
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In related news: an Uber self-driving vehicle just claimed its first pedestrian kill. Sounds like the pedestrian made the incident unavoidable.