Threat of massive compensation payouts comes closer following decision in New York.
As widely predicted in the last issue of this magazine, a federal jury sitting Brooklyn, New York has found several US firearms manufacturers guilty of negligent marketing and distribution practices, which allowed guns to fall into the hands of criminals who committed seven shooting in the New York area.
Although the jury only awarded limited damages the decision is an important one, because it clears the way for others to make similar claims.
The trial, wich has been watched closely across the conuntry, was the first to involve the claimants using the same strategies as those which have been so successfully deployed against the tabacco companies. Coming just as growing number of cities across the US have been preparting their own suits, the jurys decision to award punitive damages in only one of the seven cases, producted a mixed message for both sides.
Among those to be found guilty were Colt, Glock and Beretta, all of whom were accused of negligent marketing practices and who were penalised by damages amounting to $ 560,000 whilst the cases against Smith & Wesson and Browning were demissed. The jurors repeatedley reported that they were deadlocked, only to be sent back by the Judge. Industry attorneys are set to challenge the verdicts on the basis that they were a «tortured compromise» only arrived at because the judge refused to accept that they still could not agree.
Although this case is the first of its kind, the real landmark came in May last year when a senior judge ruled that the collective liability theory (which has been used against the US asbestos industry for example) applied to gun manufacturers. As Elisa Barnes, the lead prosecution attorney in the Brooklyn case said «in the market a gun is a gun«.
Meanville the industry awaits the first of the big city suits, under which claims will be made to recoup the cost of treating victims of gunshot injury. There is a belief that such suits are flawed insofaras that claims for damages must reflect the bilions of dollars which the cities themselves have earned via local taxes and sales.
Sources: Gun Trade News, april of 1999, Inglaterra; y Diario Legitima Defensa nº9, page 6. Print in Buenos Aires City, april of 1999.
