By Dave Workman
Editor-in-Chief
A federal District Court judge in Virginia has dismissed a lawsuit filed against Daniel Defense and several other firearm industry defendants by two victims who were wounded in a 2022 school shooting, ruling their complaint did not hold up under a federal law protecting industry from so-called “junk lawsuits.”
In his 11-page ruling, U.S. District Judge Claude M. Hilton, a Ronald Reagan appointee, said plaintiffs Karen Lowy and Antonio Harris, “fail the proximate causation prong of the PLCAA’s (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) predicate exception, and their claims of negligence and negligence per se far no better.”
Lowy and Harris were wounded in the April 22, 2022 shooting at Edmund Burke School in Washington, D.C.. Daniel Defense is one of the more prominent makers of semiautomatic firearms in the U.S. In addition, the lawsuit named Vista Outdoor, Inc., Federal Cartridge, Bravo Company USA, Inc., Fiocchi of America, FAP Defense Inc., Loyal 9 Manufacturing, Hearing Protection and Torkmag, Inc., Magpul Industries and Surefire, Fostech, Inc., and Centurion Arms, according to an article in Law 360.
Mark Smith at the Four Boxes Diner discussed the judge’s ruling on his podcast.
“Much of plaintiffs’ complaint concerns defendants’ marketing to Virginia residents generally and ‘young men like the shooter,’ but few paragraphs allege the effect of defendants’ marketing on Shooter specifically,” Judge Hilton wrote.
He criticized the case for engaging in speculation.
“The complaint does not suggest defendants control such evidence of Shooter’s reliance and does no more than speculate that Shooter, like other young men in Virginia, observed defendants’ advertisements, the judge observed. “Without more support, these pleadings fail to raise plaintiffs’ right to relief above the speculative level and can proceed no further.’
PLCAA was passed during the George W. Bush administration. It prevents so-called “junk lawsuits” against the firearms industry. The ultimate goal was to essentially bankrupt the industry via expensive litigation. Repealing the law has been one of the stated goals of anti-gunners, including President Joe Biden, who has repeatedly and falsely contended the law gives blanket immunity to the firearms industry from all legal actions.
“As the PLCAA’s title suggests,” Judge Hilton noted, “the statute protects firearm companies’ ‘lawful’ commerce in arms and prohibits plaintiffs from bringing civil liability actions against such companies when their injury results solely from ‘the criminal or unlawful misuse’ of the companies’ products by a third party.”
