America Is About to See How Guns Used in Mass Shootings Are Marketed

[SecularMotion]

When family members and survivors of the shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School filed suit against Bushmaster in December 2014, it seemed a lot like a lost cause. After all, a 2005 federal law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) was designed to prevent people from holding gun manufacturers accountable for wrongful deaths. Even last week, when a Connecticut judge shot down a motion to dismiss the suit, experts said she was just delaying an inevitable dismissal later down the line.

But then last Tuesday, that same judge, Barbara Bellis, of Connecticut's Superior Court, issued another ruling that determined the suit would be more than symbolic. Specifically, she said the discovery process could begin immediately and set a tentative trial date for April 3, 2018. A jury hearing the case would be historic, but Katherine Mesner-Hage, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says that getting the gun company to open its books for discovery is arguably just as huge.

That's because she and her co-council have constructed a creative PLCAA exemption, claiming, in essence, that the gun Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook massacre was specifically marketed as a killing machine. As part of discovery, they'll dig through the gunmaker's internal company memos and try to prove that the company was negligent.

http://www.vice.com/en_au/read/america-is-about-to-see-how-guns-used-in-mass-shootings-are-marketed

[ileus]

1. odd....my ARs are designed to save lives.

[flamin lib]

2. About time. nt

[Puha Ekapi]

3. The judge's ruling not withstanding...

...this suit won't go anywhere. If it does, car manufacturers will have to be held accountable for DUI deaths. That isn't going to happen in any rational universe.

[jmg257]

4. It shouldn't, but you never know.

(B) NEGLIGENT ENTRUSTMENT- As used in subparagraph (A)(ii), the term `negligent entrustment' means the supplying of a qualified product by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others.

Nancy Lanza didn't use the AR. Even though plaintiff's will likely be able to show she bought it for Adam, that is not the defendants' responsibility.

Yes, Bushmasters goofy "man card" advertising is marketing based on "having this badass military weapon that's basically the exact same thing that our solider have carried from Vietnam to Iraq. And that's what you need", but neither the gun, nor the ads, are illegal. This suit seems to be exactly what the PLCAA is supposed to guard against.

But the judge is allowing it to continue, creatively based on "errors" made by the defendants in their motion to dismiss vs motion to strike; at that point she did not consider the merits of the negligent entrustment theory.

So, the plaintiffs are going to hope they find some thing that sticks, but how that fits with the specifics of Negligent Exception in this case, I do not see.

"Deceptive advertising, advertising despite knowing certain things––that's a little bit more analogous. Negligent entrustment is kind of a different theory.

Ok, so what if you go through discovery and don't find something that proves your theory, but merely suggest it's true? Or what if you find nothing at all?

"Well, obviously we have to find the facts the prove our case. If we don't find the facts that prove our case, defendants get another chance at the end of discovery to dismiss our case. So they get one shot at the beginning and and one after. So us going to trial is dependent upon us finding the facts.

It's hard to know exactly what we'll find, but there's a deep level of intuitiveness to the theory of our case in terms of [the company] taking a military weapon, selling it to the public, and marketing it as basically a mass casualty weapon, and continuing to market and sell it that way, despite it being used in repeated mass shootings and shootings that are more fatal than any other type of shootings. The story really speaks for itself—it's hard to say where discovery will lead us, but we are confident it will lead us toward trial."

ETA: 2 YEARS of discovery - I do hope the poor plaintiffs have VERY deep pockets.

[beevul]

5. And even then...

Wouldn't they have to prove at some point, that adam lanza had actually seen and been influenced by the advertisements in question?

Their whole theory seems...well...if you go to the town of Far-Fetched, and get on a space flight to the Ridiculous system, and visit the planet Absurd...you're almost there.

I half wonder if they're just fishing in discovery for a treasure trove of documents to use in some sort of sick twisted public shame campaign.

[jmg257]

7. You would think. They do make that claim in their 1st Amended complaint.

Ah - NOW I see it - Nancy Lanza USED the AR entrusted to her by the defendants to share/give to Adam to further connect & bond with him.

http://www.koskoff.com/In-the-News/Sandy-Hook-Families-Complaint.pdf pg 16


So THAT is why Bushmaster is responsible!!
Or not.

"the term `negligent entrustment' means the supplying of a qualified product by a seller for use by another person when the seller knows, or reasonably should know, the person to whom the product is supplied is likely to, and does, use the product in a manner involving unreasonable risk of physical injury to the person or others."

[beevul]

8. That reminds me of 6 'degrees of kevin Bacon'. N/T

[beevul]

6. Funny.

Vice: So what exactly was PLCAA designed to do, and how did you get around it?

Mesner-Hage: It was passed in 2005 in the shadow of the Iraq War—I don't think any member of the public knew that it was being passed.

We knew. It wasn't passed in the middle of the night like the NY safe act was. I wonder if Mesner-Hage approves of that.

Vice: So how does PLCAA work in practice?


Mesner-Hage: So what PLCAA did was add an additional level of protection. It did that by saying, as a general rule, you can't sue gun companies for damages resulting from the criminal use of a firearm. And most of the time, that [was] the way that people were trying to hold gun companies responsible; they were saying that someone along the way had misused the gun, and that was giving rise to lawsuit[s]. So that was the baseline of PLCAA.

Their lawyer admits what we have said all along.

But then it creates these exceptions, which is where our case kind of comes in, which is to say, "Yes, we are looking to hold these companies responsible based on Adam Lanza's obviously criminal act. However, we fall into an exception, and PLCAA is clear that if you meet an exception, you can go forward."

Precisely what the PLCAA was passed into law to protect against, and they know and admit it.

It's hard to know exactly what we'll find, but there's a deep level of intuitiveness to the theory of our case in terms of [the company] taking a military weapon, selling it to the public, and marketing it as basically a mass casualty weapon, and continuing to market and sell it that way, despite it being used in repeated mass shootings and shootings that are more fatal than any other type of shootings.

It isn't a military weapon. Its a civilian weapon. That's not theory, its fact. Nobody markets an ar-15 as a "mass casualty weapon".

[discntnt_irny_srcsm]

9. If discovery proceeds...

...(and that's a bit of an if) the most that will be changed is how companies market. Imagine the marketing analogy to certain assault weapons bans. It's just the weapons reality.

Weapons are used by criminals to settle their issues with everyone else. Career criminals are after profit often from drugs, sometimes prostitution, now and then by taking your stuff or your cash. Guns are used to facilitate those activities. Cut the profit motive in those markets and violence will drop.