Last week, Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis allowed a suit brought against gun manufacturer, Remington Arms, to move forward. That seemingly routine step, was no small feat.
The plaintiffs, survivors and family members of the Sandy Hook shooting in Newton, Connecticut, are trying to build a case against an industry that has unique protection under federal law. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), passed in 2005, has made it extremely difficult for gun makers to be sued for wrongful death.
For the first time, the marketing materials for a gun maker will be reviewed. Katherine Mesner-Hage, an attorney for the plaintiffs, says marketing experts are examining why the gun company chose to market the gun used in the Sandy Hook shooting as a military style weapon, when by their very nature, military style weapons are designed for mass killing.
“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.”
The judge set a tentative trial date for April, 2018 and allowed for discovery to begin immediately, a small, unprecedented victory.
“I can’t think of any case that’s gotten to the point in which discovery was open in the post-PLCAA era,” says Mesner-Hage, an attorney for the plaintiffs. “You get thrown out on a motion to dismiss. A handful of cases, or less, have gone all the way.”
Gun rights and gun control advocates will be watching this case closely to see if this strategy to work around the PLCAA is effective.
Image, Public Domain, via Wikimedia Common
