All eyes are on the Connecticut Supreme Court as it weighs whether to quash a wrongful-death lawsuit brought on by Sandy Hook families against gun maker Remington, The Wall Street Journal reports.
At issue is whether gun makers can be held legally responsible for mass shootings, like, in this case, the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut, where 26 - including 20 children — were slaughtered by a deranged teen wielding a semi-automatic rifle made by Remington.
The plaintiffs, families of the victims at Sandy Hook, say Remington's marketing practices and "negligent oversupply" of weapons into the distribution channel makes them responsible.
"Remington may never have known Adam Lanza, but they had been courting him for years," plaintiffs' lead counsel Josh Koskoff argued before the Court.
One expert tells the Journal that the lawsuit is a legal longshot given that Lanza didn't purchase the weapons used in the massacre; his mother, whom he also killed that day, did.
Stanford Law School Prof. David Studdert told the Journal that the legal purchase by Nancy Lanza makes it difficult to prove that Remington "knew or reasonably should have known that the gun sold to Mrs. Lanza would be used in a mass shooting."
Further, Remington has the law on its side — the 2005 law Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA).
"The PLCAA basically slowed lawsuits against gun sellers to a trickle," Georgia State University law professor Timothy Lytton told the Journal.
The lawsuit already was tossed by a lower court two years ago, prompting the petition to the state's highest court.
A reversal by state Supreme Court would pave the way for others to sue the gun industry for liability in shooting deaths, and would most certainly be appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.
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