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Bang! You're Sued! (the gun lawsuit racket.)
Josey1
Member Posts: 9,598 ✭✭
Bang! You're Sued!
by Paul Hein
You could see it coming after the tobacco cases. The cigarette manufacturers were ripped off in spectacular fashion, either because they had no real stomach for fighting the absurd charges brought against them, or the corruption of the courts made any reasonable defense impossible. Either way, it opened the door, and the potential plaintiffs waiting outside are now beginning to squeeze through.
In a federal court in Brooklyn a few years ago, a jury, in a complicated verdict, awarded $560,000 to a shooting victim, and decided that some--though not all--of the defendant gun manufacturers were negligent in marketing and distributing practices. What they meant was, the gun makers did not adequately ensure that their products would not fall into the hands of criminals. How they could hope to accomplish this isn't clear. For example, suppose a perfectly law-abiding citizen bought a gun, which was subsequently stolen and used in a murder. Should the gun manufacturer's marketing and distributing practices have foreseen the event and prevented it? How could you even begin to do that? Would the manufacturer still be negligent in his marketing and distributing practices if the gun malfunctioned, and the assailant used it to beat his victim to death? And considering the legal roadblocks placed in the way of anyone buying a gun, if one does fall into the hands of an assailant, maybe the laws written to prevent that are defective. Sue the legislators! Which ones? Hey, sue them all.
The case was brought by seven shooting victims. All but one--who was awarded the $560,000--died as a result of being shot. In no case was a firearm recovered. In other words, no one knows the make of gun which resulted in these seven assaults. So how was Glock found guilty of negligence, and Smith & Wesson exonerated? Well, it was complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that the jurors repeatedly declared themselves deadlocked, but the judge, one Jack Weinstein, refused to let the matter drop, ordering them back to the jury room (they'd been there six days) to come up with some kind of verdict. It was Judge Weinstein who had ruled, back in May, that an industry can be held responsible, as a whole, for damages, without linking any particular offense to any particular manufacturer. This same technique was used against asbestos companies. It is so laughably unjust that the only place one might expect to find it taken seriously is in the American legal system.
Suppose, for example, you're hit by a car fleeing a crime scene at night. What kind of car? Who was driving? It was too dark to see. Hey, don't fret it. Sue General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and the imports. This "argument" was used by attorney Elisa Barnes, arguing for the plaintiffs, in his closing remarks. "In the underground market a gun is a gun is a gun," he said. In other words, the entire gun industry shared the blame for all of the crimes because "each of the defendants participated in the underground market." So if I use a Volvo to rob a bank, can't Subaru be held negligent for failing to take steps to prevent their cars from falling into the hands of wrongdoers? Hey, what about the manufacturers of the ammunition used? Don't know who they are? So what? Sue all of them. They didn't take proper steps to ensure that their product wasn't used by bad guys. The proof of that is that some of it DID find its way to the villains. A simple and obvious proof of guilt!
Did the shooters get to the scene of the crimes on a subway? For that matter, are subways involved with crime in any way at all? We can only wonder if their "marketing and distributing" methods have been stringent enough to reasonably exclude would-be felons. If the shooters took a subway to the scene, but we don't know which one, sue all of them. Sure, the shooting may have been in New York, but how do we know the shooter didn't first ride the subway in Philadelphia, or Jersey City, on his way to work?
Wouldn't you be nervous if you had anything to do with the manufacture, transportation, or sale, of whiskey? If some drunk should hurt someone, you could be sued, and it matters not if your whiskey wasn't the kind the guy had been drinking, or even if it was for sale in that particular saloon. Quibble, quibble!
Well, if we've got this new legal principle, let's put it to good use. What if you suffer a loss in a lawsuit because your attorney is an incompetent *. Should you sue the law school which graduated him, because its poor "marketing and distributing" methods allowed this dolt to inflict himself upon an unsuspecting public? Sue all the law schools. Perish the thought, which is, of course, preposterous, but what if your rights were violated in court by an idiot judge? Aren't all judges liable, on the principle invoked in the gun case, that "a judge is a judge is a judge?" Seriously now, your case wouldn't fly. Oh, the legal principle is OK as applied to asbestos and guns, but it wouldn't be relevant to a judge, because--the judge would say so!
Hey, ain't American jurisprudence something else? http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Hein/hein21.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
by Paul Hein
You could see it coming after the tobacco cases. The cigarette manufacturers were ripped off in spectacular fashion, either because they had no real stomach for fighting the absurd charges brought against them, or the corruption of the courts made any reasonable defense impossible. Either way, it opened the door, and the potential plaintiffs waiting outside are now beginning to squeeze through.
In a federal court in Brooklyn a few years ago, a jury, in a complicated verdict, awarded $560,000 to a shooting victim, and decided that some--though not all--of the defendant gun manufacturers were negligent in marketing and distributing practices. What they meant was, the gun makers did not adequately ensure that their products would not fall into the hands of criminals. How they could hope to accomplish this isn't clear. For example, suppose a perfectly law-abiding citizen bought a gun, which was subsequently stolen and used in a murder. Should the gun manufacturer's marketing and distributing practices have foreseen the event and prevented it? How could you even begin to do that? Would the manufacturer still be negligent in his marketing and distributing practices if the gun malfunctioned, and the assailant used it to beat his victim to death? And considering the legal roadblocks placed in the way of anyone buying a gun, if one does fall into the hands of an assailant, maybe the laws written to prevent that are defective. Sue the legislators! Which ones? Hey, sue them all.
The case was brought by seven shooting victims. All but one--who was awarded the $560,000--died as a result of being shot. In no case was a firearm recovered. In other words, no one knows the make of gun which resulted in these seven assaults. So how was Glock found guilty of negligence, and Smith & Wesson exonerated? Well, it was complicated. In fact, it was so complicated that the jurors repeatedly declared themselves deadlocked, but the judge, one Jack Weinstein, refused to let the matter drop, ordering them back to the jury room (they'd been there six days) to come up with some kind of verdict. It was Judge Weinstein who had ruled, back in May, that an industry can be held responsible, as a whole, for damages, without linking any particular offense to any particular manufacturer. This same technique was used against asbestos companies. It is so laughably unjust that the only place one might expect to find it taken seriously is in the American legal system.
Suppose, for example, you're hit by a car fleeing a crime scene at night. What kind of car? Who was driving? It was too dark to see. Hey, don't fret it. Sue General Motors, Ford, Chrysler, and the imports. This "argument" was used by attorney Elisa Barnes, arguing for the plaintiffs, in his closing remarks. "In the underground market a gun is a gun is a gun," he said. In other words, the entire gun industry shared the blame for all of the crimes because "each of the defendants participated in the underground market." So if I use a Volvo to rob a bank, can't Subaru be held negligent for failing to take steps to prevent their cars from falling into the hands of wrongdoers? Hey, what about the manufacturers of the ammunition used? Don't know who they are? So what? Sue all of them. They didn't take proper steps to ensure that their product wasn't used by bad guys. The proof of that is that some of it DID find its way to the villains. A simple and obvious proof of guilt!
Did the shooters get to the scene of the crimes on a subway? For that matter, are subways involved with crime in any way at all? We can only wonder if their "marketing and distributing" methods have been stringent enough to reasonably exclude would-be felons. If the shooters took a subway to the scene, but we don't know which one, sue all of them. Sure, the shooting may have been in New York, but how do we know the shooter didn't first ride the subway in Philadelphia, or Jersey City, on his way to work?
Wouldn't you be nervous if you had anything to do with the manufacture, transportation, or sale, of whiskey? If some drunk should hurt someone, you could be sued, and it matters not if your whiskey wasn't the kind the guy had been drinking, or even if it was for sale in that particular saloon. Quibble, quibble!
Well, if we've got this new legal principle, let's put it to good use. What if you suffer a loss in a lawsuit because your attorney is an incompetent *. Should you sue the law school which graduated him, because its poor "marketing and distributing" methods allowed this dolt to inflict himself upon an unsuspecting public? Sue all the law schools. Perish the thought, which is, of course, preposterous, but what if your rights were violated in court by an idiot judge? Aren't all judges liable, on the principle invoked in the gun case, that "a judge is a judge is a judge?" Seriously now, your case wouldn't fly. Oh, the legal principle is OK as applied to asbestos and guns, but it wouldn't be relevant to a judge, because--the judge would say so!
Hey, ain't American jurisprudence something else? http://www.strike-the-root.com/columns/Hein/hein21.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