Connecticut judge dismisses Sandy Hook suit against gunmakers News
Connecticut judge dismisses Sandy Hook suit against gunmakers

Connecticut Superior Court [official website] Judge Barbara Bellis on Friday dismissed [opinion, PDF] a suit filed against gunmakers, including Remington Outdoor, by the families of some of the young children and adults killed at the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting [CNN backgrounder]. The complaint, alleged that the gunmakers continued selling semi-automatic rifles to the public, “disregarding the unreasonable risks the weapon poses ‘outside of specialized highly regulated institutions like the armed forces and law enforcement.” The complaint also alleged that the defendants knew that the sale of such assault rifles “posed an unreasonable and egregious risk of physical injury to others. The court dismissed the complaint on all counts, stating that “Congress, through the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) [text], has broadly prohibited lawsuits ‘against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, and importers of firearms … for the harm solely caused by the criminal or unlawful use of firearms products … by others when the product functioned as designed and intended.” The court also noted that the facts of this case do not fit under the exception whereby a suit may be filed under the common law tort of negligent entrustment.

This decision follows a ruling by the very same judge denying the gun makers’ motion to dismiss [JURIST report] the suit in April. judge Bellis allowed the case to proceed in April upon consideration of the families’ legal claim that the gun companies may have negligently promoted a weapon too dangerous for civilian use, a claim rejected in the instant ruling. Since the December 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, the Connecticut legislature has tightened gun laws while the families of victims have called for gun control. In October, the US Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit upheld [JURIST report] Connecticut and New York’s gun control legislation that bans semiautomatic weapons and high-capacity magazines. In January 2014 a judge for the US District Court for the District of Connecticut upheld [JURIST report] the constitutionality of the state’s new gun control law, while still acknowledging the Second Amendment rights of gun owners. The new law, enacted in response to the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December 2012 expanded a previous ban on assault weapons and introduced a prohibition on high-capacity ammunition magazines.

THIS DAY @ LAW

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On August 31, 1965, President Johnson signed a law making the burning of draft cards a federal offense subject to a five-year prison sentence and $1000 fine. In response to the law and in protest of the war in Vietnam, the student-run National Coordinating Committee to End the War in Vietnam staged the first public burning of a draft card in the United States on October 15, 1965. The constitutionality of the federal law was upheld in 1968 by the US Supreme Court in US v. O'Brien.

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