Families of the nine student victims and one surviving wounded teacher in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting filed a lawsuit in early January seeking to hold liable the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15 used in the massacre.
The suit is seen as a further test of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms (PLCAA) federal law designed to protect gun companies by using an exemption normally applied to car accident cases.
The plaintiffs will attempt to use what is known as the negligent entrustment exemption to the law. In a negligent entrustment case, a party can be held liable for entrusting a product, in this case the Bushmaster rifle, to another party who then causes harm to a third party,
“The court needs to decide whether they want to extend negligent entrust-ment from a retailer selling a gun to someone standing right in front of them to the theory that the manufacturer of the weapon is also responsible when the weapon they made is then sold by another party to a third person,” said Albany Law School Professor Timothy Lytton, who has written a book about the history of lawsuits against gun companies.
In addition to Bushmaster, the lawsuit names Camfour, a firearms distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales, where Nancy Lanza, the shooter’s mother, legally purchased the Bushmaster in 2010.
At the core of the suit is a claim that AR-15-style rifles, such as the Bushmaster, are too dangerous to be sold in the civilian marketplace.
