by Dave Workman
Senior Editor

In yet another blow to anti-gun politicians and gun control organizations, the Illinois Supreme Court unanimously dismissed two lawsuits against gunmakers, distributors and retailers on Nov. 18, including Chicago’s legal action that sought $433 million to cover the estimated costs of gun violence.

The other lawsuit had been filed by the families of five victims of gun-related violence, including the father of a murdered Chicago police officer, Michael Ceriale. Defendants in the lawsuits included Smith & Wesson, Beretta, Sturm Ruger & Co., Bryco Arms, Navegar, Inc., RSR Wholesale Guns and several others, including some local retailers.

Both lawsuits contended that gun manufacturers had created a “public nuisance” by marketing firearms and selling them in large volume in the Chicago area. The Illinois high court rejected that argument.

“I am really encouraged that this Supreme Court decision will be a turning point, a watershed mark in these types of cases,” said William Howard, attorney for one of the retail defendants in the Ceriale lawsuit, Chuck’s Gun Shop in suburban Riverdale, IL.

John Riggio, the second-generation owner of Chuck’s, told Gun Week that the ruling left him “numb.”

“I just don’t know what to say,” the victorious Riggio stated.

Lawrence Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), said these lawsuits “underscore the urgent need for Congress to move quickly” and pass legislation that would outlaw such legal actions. An attempt to pass such a law—which President George Bush had promised to sign—failed in March because of anti-gun killer amendments.

“This is yet another appellate court (ruling) that has rejected these junk lawsuits,” Keane told Gun Week. “The Chicago case is predicated on a now thoroughly discredited legal theory that you can hold a manufacturer responsible . . . for the criminal misuse of a product.”

He estimated that the firearms industry has spent nearly $200 million defending itself against over 30 of these lawsuits.

The ruling was a defeat for anti-gun Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley. There is some question whether the city will pursue a related case in federal court, in which it is seeking access to firearms records from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Keane predicted Chicago will pursue that case, just to get access to the information and use it possibly to craft legislation.

Richard Pearson, executive director of the Illinois State Rifle Association, criticized Daley and other anti-gun politicians for pushing such lawsuits.

“They’re not supposed to be suing legal businesses,” he said, “they’re supposed to be keeping these criminals in jail. Instead, they’re trying every way possible to blame an inanimate object for their failures in public administration.”

Pearson suggested that “it’s time for the taxpayers to start holding some of these politicians to task for what they’re doing with public tax money.”

Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, also lambasted Daley for not only pushing the lawsuit, but for also pursuing increasingly restrictive gun control legislation that would affect all Illinois residents.

“If there is a real nuisance in this case,” said Gottlieb, “it would be the anti-gun administration of Mayor Richard Daley, which has vigorously worked to disarm honest citizens, not only in Chicago, but throughout the state of Illinois, leaving them defenseless against predatory criminals.

“While we sympathize with the victims of violent crimes and their surviving families,” he added, “it is not gunmakers or legitimate retailers who are responsible, but the criminals who commit these crimes, a legal system that puts violent repeat offenders back out on the street, and Mayor Daley’s administration, working against the self-defense rights of law-abiding Illinois residents.”

Justice Rita Garman’s 65-page opinion in the Chicago case alluded to other court rulings, most notably one in New Jersey, in which a federal appeals court noted, “…no New Jersey court has ever allowed a public nuisance claim to proceed against manufacturers for lawful products that are lawfully placed in the stream of commerce. On the contrary, the courts have enforced the boundary between the well-developed body of product liability law and public nuisance law.”

Buried within the language of the ruling is a notation that Pearson said is significant.

Garman concedes that the firearms industry is “highly regulated by state or federal law…”

“The Supreme Court recognizes that the firearms industry is a highly regulated industry,” Pearson said, “which dispels the myth that the anti-gunners have tried to create, that the gun industry is not regulated. I think this is going to tell people that these lawsuits are frivolous and that they are wasting taxpayer money.”

Finally, in the Chicago ruling, Garman notes that the lawsuit essentially would have the court “creating an entirely new species of public nuisance liability.” She further noted that the court could not hold the retailer defendants liable because the guns used in various crimes had gone through various transactions that were not under the control of the dealers.

Garman’s opinion in the companion case, Young v. Bryco Arms, also recognizes that “Both the manufacturer and dealer defendants are engaged in businesses that are highly regulated by state and federal law.”

The ruling also points out that Illinois “state law prohibits minors from owning firearms,” and “municipal ordinances generally prohibit possession of handguns within the city of Chicago.”

The court noted that the plaintiffs in the Young case “do not allege that (the defendants) violated any applicable state or federal law or municipal ordinance governing the manufacture or sale of firearms.”

Instead, this lawsuit also contended that the defendants “substantially contributed to the creation of a public nuisance” in Chicago “by designing, manufacturing, marketing, and selling guns that are intended to appeal to criminals in general and to juvenile gang members in particular,” Garman observed.

In a special concurrence, Justice Charles Freeman, writing for Chief Justice Mary Ann G. McMorrow and Justices Thomas R. Fitzgerald, Thomas L. Kilbride and Philip J. Rarick, lamented at the crime statistics Chicago has rolled up in recent years. He alluded to 500 firearms fatalities reported during 1996, 1997 and 1998, adding that more than ten percent of the victims were under the age of 17.

However, Freeman acknowledged that “as defendants argue, they are the results of the actions of third parties unrelated to defendants.”

Freeman, in his special concurring opinion, asserts that some of the allegations in the case are “disturbing.” He especially focused on the allegation that gunmakers and distributors “oversaturated markets near Chicago” and that the defendants “were not only aware that their products were used by third parties for criminal acts, but that the defendants affirmatively sought to increase their profit by pandering to that market.”

Yet, Freeman revealed an apparent lack of knowledge about firearms when he criticized Navegar for having marketed one of its firearms by pointing to the “fingerprint-resistant coating” on the gun. Joe Waldron, executive director of the Citizens Committee for the Right to Keep and Bear Arms, told Gun Week that this type of finish hardly prevents fingerprints from being left on a gun, but instead only protects the finish from certain natural acids that might be left on a gun’s surface by the human hand.

Freeman concludes, however, that, “I do not believe that all gun manufacturers should be insurers or guarantors of the conduct of the users of their product.”