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Ohio court allows liability lottery to proceed
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Ohio court allows liability lottery to proceed
The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 last week to reinstate a liability lawsuit filed by Cincinnati against a group of American handgun manufacturers in an attempt to recoup millions of dollars spent by the city on police, emergency, court and health-care services in response to gun-related violence.
Of course, such calculations rarely take into account the compensating benefits to the economy from the reduction in crime and personal injuries attributed to the deterrent effect of law-abiding Americans possessing legal arms for self-defense.
But the more important question here is whether our judges should be allowing any lawsuits to proceed which do not allege fraud, nor careless or willful production of defective products, but which rather attempt to bleed perfectly legal American businesses for the "offense" of manufacturing legal products.
Lawyers for the gunmakers -- including Beretta U.S.A., Colt's Manufacturing Co. and Smith & Wesson Corp. -- warned the court that a ruling in Cincinnati's favor could quickly lead to the manufacturers of other legal products being held equally liable.
"Alcoholic beverage manufacturers, who also produce a legal product, would be held liable for misuse of alcohol in the city of Cincinnati," said attorney James Dorr. "The same thing with automobile manufacturers who have a generalized awareness that their automobiles are going to be involved in accidents."
The Ohio justices ignored this sensible warning, instead narrowly holding that an appeals court was wrong in dismissing the lawsuit. The majority argued that the ruling does not imply the justices believe Cincinnati will prevail in its lawsuit, but only that the city had enough facts on its side to be allowed to pursue its claims.
Perhaps there will still turn out to be some ironic appropriateness in the fact that Cincinnati's chosen symbol is the winged bronze pig. For even though the Queen City is among 30-odd towns and counties nationwide that have sued the firearms industry in recent years, state supreme courts in Florida, Connecticut and Louisiana have all dismissed similar lawsuits there, leaving Cincinnati's as one of the last of these extortion plots still standing.
Those courts took seriously their role as "gatekeepers," charged with preventing overly creative class-action lawyers from using their courtrooms as charnel houses in which law-abiding defendant corporations can be hung on hooks, gutted and skinned out.
It's all well and good to say, "The suit will probably fail on its merits, eventually." But the justices in Columbus surely know there's little downside even for plaintiffs who roll the liability dice and lose -- while in fact most such suits are settled long before they ever reach a jury, as even innocent defendants find little choice but to cut their losses and pay these hyenas to go away and stop picking off the weakest of the herd.
A new law that took effect in Ohio last October grants gunmakers immunity from such lawsuits -- but doesn't affect the Cincinnati case because it was enacted after the lawsuit in question was filed. The law strikes a sensible balance -- quite properly, gunmakers would still would be held responsible for damage or injuries caused by defective weapons.
That's what the civil courts are for. To let them be used for anything else -- for extracting a pound of flesh from Anheuser-Busch because certain excessive drinkers develop liver disease, or from McDonald's because some folks who eat too many fries eventually develop diabetes -- is to risk paralyzing our entire economy in a cynical game of "who can pick the deepest pocket"?
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jun-17-Mon-2002/opinion/18962443.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878
The Ohio Supreme Court voted 4-3 last week to reinstate a liability lawsuit filed by Cincinnati against a group of American handgun manufacturers in an attempt to recoup millions of dollars spent by the city on police, emergency, court and health-care services in response to gun-related violence.
Of course, such calculations rarely take into account the compensating benefits to the economy from the reduction in crime and personal injuries attributed to the deterrent effect of law-abiding Americans possessing legal arms for self-defense.
But the more important question here is whether our judges should be allowing any lawsuits to proceed which do not allege fraud, nor careless or willful production of defective products, but which rather attempt to bleed perfectly legal American businesses for the "offense" of manufacturing legal products.
Lawyers for the gunmakers -- including Beretta U.S.A., Colt's Manufacturing Co. and Smith & Wesson Corp. -- warned the court that a ruling in Cincinnati's favor could quickly lead to the manufacturers of other legal products being held equally liable.
"Alcoholic beverage manufacturers, who also produce a legal product, would be held liable for misuse of alcohol in the city of Cincinnati," said attorney James Dorr. "The same thing with automobile manufacturers who have a generalized awareness that their automobiles are going to be involved in accidents."
The Ohio justices ignored this sensible warning, instead narrowly holding that an appeals court was wrong in dismissing the lawsuit. The majority argued that the ruling does not imply the justices believe Cincinnati will prevail in its lawsuit, but only that the city had enough facts on its side to be allowed to pursue its claims.
Perhaps there will still turn out to be some ironic appropriateness in the fact that Cincinnati's chosen symbol is the winged bronze pig. For even though the Queen City is among 30-odd towns and counties nationwide that have sued the firearms industry in recent years, state supreme courts in Florida, Connecticut and Louisiana have all dismissed similar lawsuits there, leaving Cincinnati's as one of the last of these extortion plots still standing.
Those courts took seriously their role as "gatekeepers," charged with preventing overly creative class-action lawyers from using their courtrooms as charnel houses in which law-abiding defendant corporations can be hung on hooks, gutted and skinned out.
It's all well and good to say, "The suit will probably fail on its merits, eventually." But the justices in Columbus surely know there's little downside even for plaintiffs who roll the liability dice and lose -- while in fact most such suits are settled long before they ever reach a jury, as even innocent defendants find little choice but to cut their losses and pay these hyenas to go away and stop picking off the weakest of the herd.
A new law that took effect in Ohio last October grants gunmakers immunity from such lawsuits -- but doesn't affect the Cincinnati case because it was enacted after the lawsuit in question was filed. The law strikes a sensible balance -- quite properly, gunmakers would still would be held responsible for damage or injuries caused by defective weapons.
That's what the civil courts are for. To let them be used for anything else -- for extracting a pound of flesh from Anheuser-Busch because certain excessive drinkers develop liver disease, or from McDonald's because some folks who eat too many fries eventually develop diabetes -- is to risk paralyzing our entire economy in a cynical game of "who can pick the deepest pocket"?
http://www.lvrj.com/lvrj_home/2002/Jun-17-Mon-2002/opinion/18962443.html
"If cowardly and dishonorable men sometimes shoot unarmed men with army pistols or guns, the evil must be prevented by the penitentiary and gallows, and not by a general deprivation of a constitutional privilege." - Arkansas Supreme Court, 1878