Imagine that a murderous, maniac driver deliberately plowed a stolen Dodge Charger into a large crowd killing many people and creating national headlines.
Would Fiat-Chrysler be at fault for this misuse of its product? Of course not. And if the friends and family of those killed and maimed tried to sue the automaker for its incidental involvement, most people would recognize instantly that the case would be meritless. They would recognize it despite all of the sympathy they would surely have for those harmed.
Yet this week, a Connecticut judge approved a precisely parallel case for presentation before a jury in state court. But the case does not involve a car but a gun — the one used in the Sandy Hook massacre. The plaintiffs, their supporters, and the judge either ignore or cannot see the destructive implications this case would have for the rule of law, were it allowed to proceed.
In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which has repeatedly come up in this year’s Democratic presidential debates because Bernie Sanders voted for it. Its purpose was to prevent what was then a growing trend of meritless product liability lawsuits against gunmakers. (One hesitates to call them frivolous because that suggests a degree of levity, which does not apply here.)
Given the realities of jury-shopping and left-wing results-based jurisprudence, lawsuits designed to destroy gun rights represent a genuine threat to the Second Amendment. As with any other industry, gunmakers have a limit to how much time and money they can afford to spend in court defending such cases before business becomes prohibitively expensive. That is what the anti-gun lobby understands in pursuing their cases.
Once you understand how these gun cases resemble our example with the Dodge Charger, it becomes clear that Congress did not carve out any kind of special treatment for gun-makers. Rather, it acted to try and make sure they were treated the same as everyone else. The law does not, as many journalists falsely write, shield gunmakers from civil lawsuits. If their products cause injury because they are defectively designed or manufactured, they can be sued just like any other company. But as with the makers of other products known to be useful but potentially dangerous, they cannot be sued just because their products are guns.
The Connecticut case we referred to above is being brought by plaintiffs than whom no one could engage more sympathy. The ten families lost children in the Sandy Hook massacre. There hearts were broken and their lives shattered. They all are changed forever. Their response to what happened that day cannot but be wrenching.
But that is precisely why they are now proving the wisdom behind the 2005 law that will, or should, result in this case being thrown out.
The judge who decided that this case can go before a jury in her state cited a supposed loophole in that law. It allows a possibility of liability if a gunmaker knows or should know his product is being sold to unfit persons.
The theory of how this might apply is fanciful: The idea is that no one except the military and law enforcement is fit to purchase the variety of guns used in the massacre, including some of the most popular guns in the United States. This is tendentious reasoning at its worst, especially when one considers that the Sandy Hook killer did not obtain his guns through a lawful purchase (he was actually turned down when he tried to buy guns), but by killing their owner and stealing them.
In bringing this case, the plaintiffs rely on the hope that emotion will trump reason. The truth is that no matter how appalling their loss and no matter how much sympathy the calamaties that befell them should provoke, their legal case is meritless and should fail. Their case is an attack on the rule of law and constitutional order.
The court system is supposed to provide appropriate circumstances for cool deliberation. The reason we have learned judges, there reason we ask the court to sift the evidence, the reason we try to weed out prejudices from the jury pool, is to remove distorting emotion from decision-making. A sympathetic group of plantiffs should not be allowed to harry a legal business manufacturing a properly functioning legal product. It is a shame that this one judge traduced the trust given to her by the position she occupies. Fortunately, and thanks to the far-sighted work of Congress more than a decade ago, she is unlikely to have the last word.
