The wrongful death complaint advances claims of negligence based on the theory that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle should not have been made publicly available because it was designed for military use. It is not a new claim. Prior lawsuits have challenged weapons that are ill-suited for hunting or home defense from these types of rifles to cheap “Saturday Night Specials.” They have been uniformly unsuccessful, though this lawsuit is crafted to meet an exception under a 2005 federal law. It is a creative challenge but not one with a high likelihood of success. This does not reflect on the lawyers, but they have a considerable challenge in making such a case in light of federal law and prior cases. That certainly does not mean that lawyers should not continue to try to find relief for their clients, but they re no doubt aware of odds against prevailing against these defendants.
Even without the federal law, common law actions were largely rejected in claims of nuisance, product liability, and negligence, though some in states like Illinois had initial success. See, e.g., City of Philadelphia v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp., 277 F.3d 415, 422 (3d Cir. 2002); City of Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp., 821 N.E.2d 1099, 1116, 1148 (Ill. 2004).
The Illinois cases are an example of the high challenge faced by these families. The two cases are Chicago v. Beretta Corp. and Young v. Bryco Arms.
In the Beretta case, the City of Chicago relied upon a public nuisance suit against eight manufacturers, four distributors, and eleven dealers of handguns. In Bryco Arms, the families of two persons who had been killed by the use of illegally possessed firearms brought a similar public nuisance lawsuit against two manufacturers, the two distributors, and the dealer. Both failed, including a holding in the second case that it was not an “unreasonable” interference with a public right to sell such weapons since this is a legal activity.
There have been some successes for those challenging gun manufacturers. For example, the .223-caliber Bushmaster rifle was the gun used by the D.C. area sniper that killed 10 people in 2002. After those shooting, Bushmaster and a gun dealer agreed to pay $2.5 million to two survivors and six families in a 2004 settlement. However, also that year, a California court ruled that Bushmaster and other gun manufacturers were not responsible for a 1999 shooting spree that killed a postal worker and injured five people at a Jewish community center in Los Angeles.
In 2005, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) affording immunity to gun manufacturers and dealers in federal and state court. The law prohibits “qualified civil liability actions,” based on “the criminal or lawful misuse” of firearms or ammunition. There are six exceptions for such things as knowingly transferring a firearm for the commission of violence or negligence per se or the violation of state or federal laws.
The lawsuit tries to secure liability through one of those exceptions. Under the so-called negligent entrustment exception a party can be held liable for entrusting a product to another party who then causes harm to a third party. I simply do not see how this theory, often used in automobile liability cases, would fit this circumstance based on the concept that a gun designed it manifestly ill-suited for private use. The exception would swallow the statutory rule in such a circumstance and invite courts to rule that certain weapons are not sufficiently designed for expected uses. Those lawful uses however include not just hunting and personal protection but recreational shooting. Just two years ago, there were an estimated 2.5-3.7 million rifles from the AR-15 class in civilian use in the United States. That is a huge number of weapons being used for everything from hunting to target shooting. That creates a statistical advantage for these companies in arguing that only a small fraction are used in criminal acts. Indeed, the percentage is likely to be lower than other weapons like handguns.
The fact is that this remains a lawful product sold lawfully under state and federal law. The success of the lawsuit is highly doubtful in light of the federal and state case law as well as the federal statute.