[JURIST] The Illinois Supreme Court Thursday unanimously dismissed two lawsuits which accused gunmakers of knowingly allowing their weapons to fall into criminal hands. The two Illinois lawsuits, filed by the city of Chicago and victims of gun violence, had accused Smith & Wesson, Beretta USA Corp., Sturm Ruger & Co. Inc., and other gunmakers and suburban gun shops of creating a public nuisance by putting guns in the metropolitan market knowing they would end up in the city, which bans handguns. The court found no legal basis to hold the gunmakers responsible:

In sum, we hold that plaintiffs' public nuisance claims against both the manufacturer and the dealer defendants must be dismissed. Even granting, arguendo, that plaintiffs can establish that a public right has been infringed upon by defendants' conduct, their allegations of negligence are not supported by any recognized duty and we have declined their invitation to recognize such a duty. Further, their allegations of intentional conduct are an insufficient basis for public nuisance liability as a matter of law. City of Chicago, slip op. at 64. Finally, the defendants' conduct is not a legal cause of the alleged nuisance because the claimed harm is the aggregate result of numerous unforeseeable intervening criminal acts by third parties not under defendants' control.

The gunmakers had argued that the lawsuits threatened the Second Amendment. The rulings may have far-reaching implications for similar lawsuits filed nationwide which are targeting health and safety breaches caused by guns. Despite the unanimous ruling, five of the seven justices joined a separate concurrence which notes disturbing facts found in the city's statistics and urges the Legislature to step in. Read the opinion here. AP has more.