A Connecticut judge ruled Thursday afternoon that a lawsuit against Remington Arms Company over the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School can move forward.
The ruling is a victory for the victims and families who brought what could be a landmark case against gun manufacturers—but it should be understood as a narrow procedural win that did not yet beat back the gunmaker-immunity law passed by Congress in 2005. Ultimately, the unprecedented immunity given to gun manufacturers may still shield Remington from any liability for the deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook in December 2012.
The families are arguing that Remington is liable for “negligent entrustment” of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S that Adam Lanza used to carry out the massacre. When Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), the highly controversial legislation that gave gun manufacturers broad immunity against civil suits, it wrote in an exemption for negligent-entrustment claims.
"But negligent-entrustment cases have commonly involved situations where a gun shop sells a weapon to someone it knows shouldn’t have it. The Sandy Hook families are making a novel claim that gun companies, and in this case Remington, are guilty of negligent entrustment by the very act of mass producing and marketing lethal, military-style weapons to the general public despite recurring evidence that assault rifles are used in mass killings—and that the gunmaker-immunity law does not apply.
If successful, their case would open the industry to waves of lawsuits over deaths caused by assault rifles. If the trial even got to the discovery phase, it might reveal fascinating information about how gun companies market their weapons, and what they truly believe about the lethality of their products."
Judge Barbara Bellis didn’t rule on the question of whether the families have a legitimate negligent-entrustment claim that gets past the PLCAA. Rather, she rejected a bold defense motion to dismiss the case that argued that the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction in the first place.
The Newtown Families Just Won a Big Victory in Their Fight Against Remington Guns | The Nation
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