U.S. Court Rejects New York Gun Lawsuit

A federal appeals court dismissed New York City's blanket lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gunmakers against third-party litigation. The appellate ruling killed off - once and for all, perhaps - legal efforts by the city to charge gunmakers and distributors with knowingly flooding illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The suit, initially filed in 2000, was debated so much nationally that former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani was even criticized during his presidential campaign for having initially supported it.

In December 2005, Judge Jack B. Weinstein, of United States District Court in Brooklyn, allowed the suit to move forward despite protests by gunmakers like Beretta U.S.A., Browning Arms, Colt Manufacturing, Glock and Smith & Wesson, which pointed to a federal law passed two months earlier in October. That law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, banned all third-party suits against the gun industry except for those in which a plaintiff could prove that gunmakers had violated other state or federal statutes in their sales and marketing practices.

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg's administration argued that the gun manufacturers, by failing to monitor retail dealers closely enough, allowed guns to end up in the hands of criminals. As a result, the manufacturers created a "condition that negatively affects the public health or safety," the city said and, thus, violated New York State's public nuisance law. But the Second Circuit Court of Appeals rejected that argument, ruling that the state nuisance law did not constitute a permissible exception under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

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