Firearms Owners Against Crime
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Institute for Legal, Legislative and Educational Action
Attorneys for families of some of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting victims have filed their first legal brief, seeking to have the state Supreme Court reinstate a lawsuit against gunmaker Remington Arms Co.
In a 62-page document, attorney Josh Koskoff highlights the families' contention that Remington knowingly marketed a military weapon to a high-risk class of young males fascinated with violent video games, knowing before the 2012 school shooting that the AR-15 had become the weapon of choice for mass shooters.
Adam Lanza used a Bushmaster AR-15 to shoot and kill 20 first-graders and six adults.
"Remington reached its desired demographic: young men like Adam Lanza," Koskoff wrote. "Plaintiffs allege that Adam was a devoted player of first-person shooter games and partial to the AR-15 for committing virtual violence. He was obsessed with the military and aspired to join the elite Army Rangers unit. But when Adam turned eighteen on April 22, 2010, he did not enlist; rather than submit to rigorous mental health screening he almost certainly would have failed – and in any event uninterested in strict military oversight – Adam Lanza chose a simpler path: unfettered access to the Bushmaster."
Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from the Bushmaster AR-15.
The lawsuit also named Camfour Holding LLP, the gun's distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales, Inc., the East Windsor gun shop where Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, bought the AR-15.
In her written ruling on the widely watched case, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis agreed with attorneys for Remington that the lawsuit "falls squarely within the broad immunity" provided to gun manufacturers and dealers by federal law, specifically the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The judge made it clear the families' claims that the gun company should be held liable for Adam Lanza's actions did not meet the narrow exceptions the federal law allows. She dismissed the case against Remington and Camfour.
"Although PLCAA provides a narrow exception under which plaintiffs may maintain an action for negligent entrustment of a firearm, the allegations in the present case do not fit within the common-law tort of negligent entrustment under well-established Connecticut law, nor do they come within PLCAA's definition of negligent entrustment," Bellis wrote.
The families attorneys are hoping a case involving a slingshot injury in Michigan will help them prove that one of the largest gun manufacturers in the world negligently entrusted the AR-15 to Lanza even though he didn't actually purchase it and help them overcome PLCAA's strict language favoring the gun manufacturers.
The case in Michigan was a 1977 lawsuit by the family of a 12-year-old against a company that manufactured slingshots. The boy was injured when he was struck in the eye by a pellet fired from a slingshot that richocheted off a tree.
The court allowed the case to go before a jury ruling that the company entrusted the slingshot to a class of people, in this case younger children, that made the ultimate accident foreseeable.
In this case, Koskoff argued instead of a slingshot Remington used marketing and product placement to purposefully target a "younger demographic of users" interested in the most dangerous and lethal use of their weapon.
"The defendants ignored myriad risks associated with the mechanical power of the weapon, the porous environment into which it was sold, and mounting evidence that the AR-15 had become the weapon of choice for lone shooters looking to inflict maximum casualties," Koskoff wrote.
"The link between that conduct and dangerous users just like Adam Lanza creates a jury question as to whether the entrustment of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S was negligent," he added.
Remington's attorneys will have two months to file their reply brief. The plaintiffs will then have another month after that to file their reply to that brief. The case isn't expected to before the Supreme Court until next fall.
http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-sandy-hook-supreme-court-lawsuit-20170301-story.html