Judge rules synagogue shooting victims can sue Smith & Wesson
A San Diego judge ruled last week that the survivors and families of victims of a 2019 shooting at a California synagogue can sue Smith & Wesson, the manufacturer of the weapon used in the incident, in addition to the gun store that sold it.
Reuters reported that San Diego Superior Court Judge Kenneth Medel dismissed a claim from Smith & Wesson that the lawsuit was not permitted based on the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a regulation that protects gunmakers and sellers from some responsibility when their products are used for crimes.
An accused gunman, later identified as John Earnest, who was 19 at the time of the incident, opened fire at the Chabad of Poway Synagogue in Poway, Calif., in April 2019, killing one worshiper and injuring three other people, including a rabbi and an 8-year-old, according to The Washington Post.
The plaintiffs filed a lawsuit in June 2020 claiming that Smith & Wesson breached state law by manufacturing the M&P15 rifle to be easily changed into an assault weapon, Reuters reported.
The “M&P” in the name of the gun reportedly stands for “Military and Police,” even though they were largely sold to civilians, according to Reuters.
The lawsuit claimed that the company used marketing tactics “that attracted impulsive young men with military complexes who were particularly likely to be attracted to the unique ability of AR-15 style weapons,” according to the wire service.
They argued that potential mass shooters would be attracted to the marketing of the gun, including Earnest.
The judge determined that the legal action at hand was under an exception to the PLCAA that permits lawsuits to be filed against gun manufacturers or sellers when state law is breached, according to Reuters. He said the lawsuit argues that the the company violated California’s Unfair Competition Law, which prohibits deceptive marketing, thus being eligible for the PLCAA exception.
This is the exact same dubious logic that has allowed the Sandy Hook families to get around the PLCAA and sue Remington/Bushmaster.
It’s fucking bullshit is what it is.
A vicious Jew hater committed a horrible crime but Smith & Wesson didn’t make him do that.
This is an entirely partisan bullshit case that is being allowed to go forward in an anti-gun state for political reasons.
And looking at the comments online, this is inviting the pro-gun crowd to anti-Semitism, which is really pissing me off.
The PLCAA exists for this exact reason and hyper partisan judges are doing everything they can to skirt it.
Fuck them.
And don’t let this be a nexus for Jew hatred. Gun owning Jews are rare and we’re trying to increase our numbers. Antisemitism from the pro-gun community won’t help. This isn’t a Jewish thing, this is a Leftist activist Lawyer thing. Don’t forget that.
Some people in the congregation had to go along with it.
Either surrender Jews or scum looking for a payday over dead bodies and trampling the rights of others. Scum.
I miss Meyer Lansky.
And sue the car manufactures that made the car that drove him there, and the same for his shoes, and pants, and shirt, heck, add the fast food outlet that gave him the energy to shoot… and and and.
I have difficulty seeing this as other than blood dancing parasites, typical of the left.
Unfortunately, as you, J Kb. , Have noted, in the Venn diagram of poly-ticks, “liberal fascist” and “liberal jew” have notable overlap.
Puzzlingly so.
Liberal Jews, as noted time and again on this blog, don’t actually care too much for Judaism.
JINOs. Jews in Name Only.
They’ll care when they get to the gates of Heaven and G-d is shaking His head in disappointment.
They’ll care when they have to explain to Him why, with the long and storied history of the G-d’s people, they chose to befriend and tolerate the people that hate and want to kill them*.
They’ll care when they have to explain to Him why, with that long and storied history, when commanded to protect life and freedom they chose to support policies that make it more difficult (or impossible) to do so**.
It doesn’t help us or them now, but one day, they’ll care.
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* – A one-line sum-up of several Jewish holy day observances can go thusly: “They came to kill us. With the help of the Lord, we survived and killed them right back. Praise G-d! Let’s eat!” It happened on multiple occasions, as recorded in Scripture.
** – Alternative to the last note, several other holy days commemorate when the Hebrews were delivered from bondage and servitude … which they were usually subjected to as a direct result of disobeying G-d’s commands. Either way, the lessons are right there in Scripture.
True ‘dat!
Still, history, Holocaust, program, purges, (the list goes on)
(response to Ish)
Kapos gonna kapo.
This is exactly the outcome they wanted from the CT supreme court ruling.
PLCAA is designed to stop people from suing people based on the actions of a third party. You can’t sue the car dealer because they sold a car to somebody, regardless if that person has multiple DUI. You can’t sue a car manufacturer because the dealer sold a car to a person that had multiple DUIs and then killed somebody with a car.
But they left in “if the FFL or Manufacture does something wrong, they can still be sued.”
So in CT they said “Well, the gun wasn’t broken, the manufacturer didn’t provide bad goods, the dealer didn’t sell bad goods. But the manufacturer advertised in such a way as to attract bad people who then committed crimes.”
I don’t remember when it was, but there was a car manufacturer that created a mid engine car, the Fiero. It was a cool looking car. Sporty, looked like a lower cost option to Corvet Camaros and TAs.
The ad campaign showed the car getting tickets while parked because it “looked fast.” Turned out that the car had poor handling, poor performance and poor passenger layout. But they sold a boat load of those cars to boys that wanted fast looking sports cars.
The current suits are of the form “The ads implied that the car was fast and had sports handling but my child died because they lost control of the car.”
Andrew Cuomo just signed an EO that is designed to make it easier to sue gun manufacturers and sellers for miss use of their products because of “advertising”.
This suite in CA is just more of the same. It is all as they hoped and planned.
Regardless of the final outcome, the manufacturer has spent years in court and paid millions of dollars in legal fees. And there is no way that they can get those legal fees back, even if they win and got that judgement. Those people suing don’t have the money to pay back legal fees and their own legal fees are being paid for by infringement groups.
There is a technique gun makers may want to adopt.
Skydiving businesses have to worry a lot about ambulance chasing lawyers. Not that skydiving is all that dangerous (it is comparable to motorcycling) but it’s easy for dishonest lawyers to make it sound that way to the ignorant jury members.
One parachute manufacturer addressed this problem head on. They are known as “United Parachute Technologies” — but their official registered company name is “The Uninsured United Parachute Technologies”.
In other words “no deep pockets here. You can sue us, but the best outcome you can hope for is that you’re suddenly the owner of our company. Plan accordingly.”
Assuming those groups don’t just jettison those plaintiffs the way Brady did.
The infringement groups have no skin in the game. While they are paying for lawyers for the plaintiffs, they are not responsible for any judgements. And yes, I do expect the plaintiffs to be dropped in the s*** as soon as the case is ruled against them.
But that was never the concern of the infringers. All they care about is that they have driven up the cost for manufacturers and resellers. I’m sure there are boatloads of FFL holders that are looking into “litigation insurance” because there is no way they can afford to stay in business if one of these Bloomberg groups decides to sue them.
And it won’t be long before we start to see these suits coming up for everyday murder.
Miss ‘othing, mother to Di’nt and Know’ng, sues the FFL in Indiana because her poor son, who was turning his life around, about to go to collage (once he finishes 8th grade), was killed by the gun that was sold 15 years ago to E. Fud by FFL.
The Fiero was built by Pontiac as a commuter car and it was a great little car for that purpose. Problem was, as you posted, it looked like it was a baby Corvette, which was not Pontiacs problem because stupid people bought them. As an example, look back to the VW Beatle, slow, noisy, durable POS, that felt like it was really handling well and fast, which it was neither.
Good thing the murderer didn’t use a Walther P-38…. ?
Yeah, they might have to sue Hasbro for making Megatron into a cool gun.
I can’t for the life of me figure out why the comment eater ate yet another comment of mine. Could it be because I edited it, then clicked “save”?
Aha.
I think I figured out the comment eater. I had entered a comment, then edited it to make a small wording change. Clicked “save”. The new text was shown to me, but when I moved off the page and returned a few minutes later, it was gone.
Just now did an experiment. I typed in a comment (complaining about the comment eater). It showed up. Clicked edit, changed a word, clicked save. It still showed. I then refreshed the page. POOF, gone.
So it looks like there is a serious bug in the comment edit feature.
I’ve emailed Miguel about that. Akismet is flagging some edited comments as spam or suspicious. Miguel can go through and approve them, but there’s definitely something going on with Akismet.
It didn’t use to do that. If it does now, it’s time to scrap it if the company can’t or won’t fix it. Does Bezos own Akismet?
No, it’s owned by the same company that owns WordPress. It keeps a database of spam comments, to help it more effectively auto-filter spam.
What probably happened is, someone flagged a comment of yours on an Akismet-enabled site, and it added you to the database.
Unfortunately, I have no idea how to get removed from a private, proprietary database. 🙁
I doubt this is become a nexus for antisemitism. At most, it is a light to the moth. Those drawn to this already have a proclivity to antisemitism. They would simply use this case to congregate to reveal themselves one to the other. They find their power in populist thought; the mob is their power.
Those with an antisemitic bent will use any and every thing to empower their world view. This is not me being an apologist for that depraved mind.
Those with an antisemitic bent will use any and every thing to empower their world view.
It’s not unique to antisemitic people. Anyone with any flavor of totalitarian streak will do the same.
And no, objectively pointing out an opponent’s strategy in no way shows support for the depravity of the mind using it.
See the Insty story about the teacher discovering her school’s curriculum no longer includes the Holocaust.
Legal Insurrection covered it, too. I almost couldn’t believe what I was reading.
They won’t cover the Holocaust because “students can’t relate” to those events. But they can relate to slavery and racism? Riiiight….
They say those who don’t learn history are doomed to repeat it. Sometimes I think the Left heard that and said, “Hold my beer, we can do both.”
*headdesk*
IANAL notice:
They still have to prove beyond the shadow of a doubt that advertising is what caused this individual to purchase this firearm. I would be very interested to see that argument.
What “expert” testimony would the prosecution bring to bear demonstrating that advertising can push a person to commit a crime? And, would that not also condemn every business that advertises with anything other than bland harmless imagery?
To argue that Smith and Wesson has any responsibility because of their advertising is almost impossible.
If I were a lawyer, I would be chomping at the bit to defend this case.
CBMTTek, wrong type of case. In a *criminal* case you have to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt.
In a civil case “the plaintiff has the burden of proving his case by a preponderance of the evidence.”
This is how come O.J. could be found not guilty in criminal court and then be sued and lose in civil court.
Good point. As noted, IANAL.
However, preponderance of evidence indicating the shooter was driven to commit the crime by advertising. Yeah. Good luck.
How do you determine the shooter was pushed to commit the crime because of advertising? What level of expert witnesses have to be called to demonstrate that?
And, where are the other shooters who are pushed to commit horrific crimes because of advertising? Unless it can be demonstrated the effect extends beyond this one case, the advertising is not the problem. Millions of people a day see the same ad. If only one person out of those millions is pushed to commit a crime, the problem is not the ad. The shooter is the problem.
Therefore, S&W cannot be held liable.
They will only need to prove to a jury that is looking at pictures of dead children that the firearm used was “deadly” or “easy to kill with” or a dozen different phrases and then imply that the shooter was influenced to pick that gun by advertisements.
“If only poor *bleep* hadn’t seen the ads showing how manly a bushmaster rifle is, they would have five the dirty with a knife or pistol or bolt action rifle, and then little Sue, you can see her laying in a puddle of her own blood right here, would still be alive”
How do you determine the shooter was pushed to commit the crime because of advertising? What level of expert witnesses have to be called to demonstrate that?
How do you demonstrate to the satisfaction of the jury that the shooter even saw or viewed the advertising content in question? If he never saw it, it could not have been a factor.
Then, how do you demonstrate that that particular ad campaign influenced his decision to purchase that rifle or that brand, as opposed to any other gun on the shelf? Being a gun shop, they almost certainly had others available. (Or maybe, leading up to a major Presidential primary where “gun control” was already a huge campaign issue, maybe the shop didn’t have others. Which would REALLY not be the fault of S&W’s marketing group.)
Would it introduce sufficient doubt if S&W or the shop owner listed the models and prices on the shelf that day and the S&W had been on sale, marked down, or otherwise less expensive for a known brand?
I know that if I needed “an AR-15” and wasn’t picky about brand, that last would certainly influence my decision, completely separate from any ads. I mean, Daniel Defense makes a fine AR-15, but most of us don’t have $2K+ to drop on one, and neither would a 19-year-old nursing student. OTOH, a S&W marked down to under a third of that is much more reasonable for what is still a decent rifle, and leaves you money to buy extra mags and ammo to fill them. (Around here, S&W and Ruger tend to be the least-spendy of the big brands. Only the virtually-unknown “local” manufacturers are cheaper.)
IANAL, so I can’t say what the threshold of evidence or demonstration needs to be or what arguments that particular judge/jury will find compelling, but it seems to me that if this is allowed to go to trial, it will be much harder for the plaintiffs to get the “50%+1” that S&W’s ads were the biggest influence once the defense introduces other, more mundane — but more influential — factors.
———
As an aside, seeing as the shooter is still alive, did anyone think to just ask him why he bought that rifle from that store? Because it seems to me, that would be the most definitive answer.
Not “shadow of a doubt.” By a 50%+1 standard; a preponderance of the evidence.
That is the legal standard in a civil suit.
Thank you! I can’t say for certain but I believe this described behavior is consistent with what’s happened with my comments as well.
And that was entered as a reply to PK … But it showed up here. Such is life.