Thursday, December 18, 2014
quote of the day
A businessman himself, Bill Sherlach, the husband of Mary Sherlach said: "In business, measuring risk prior
to producing, marketing, and selling a product or service is standard
procedure. For far too long the gun industry has been given legislative
safe harbor from this standard business practice. I believe in the
Second Amendment, but I also believe that the gun industry should be
brought to bear the same business risk that every other business assumes
when it comes to producing, marketing and selling a product."
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Would that be the same risk fertilizer companies face if their product is misused? Or Ryder truck dealers?
ReplyDeleteYour misstatements of the law are a discredit to your profession pooch.
Ryder truck has been sued many times for the injuries caused by a rental driver.
DeleteYes, Anon? And which of these cases did they win or lose? What differentiated them? Can you find a case where someone not authorized to drive the truck stole it, ran over people intentionally, and Ryder was to blame?
DeleteBarring this, maybe you want to point out to us where the proximate cause lies which links a gun maker to crimes committed with his gun and which does not link the manufacturer of a car to a crowd of people it is intentionally driven into? Why are we to blame Bushmaster for Sandy Hook but not blame the fertilizer maker for bombings like Oklahoma City?
Why should guns have special protection from lawsuits?
DeleteAnon at 6:16 PM
DeleteThey shouldn't. What Congress tried to do was protect them from lawsuits that never should have been allowed.
Lawsuits like Sandy Hook parents bringing a product liability lawsuit against the manufacturer should be laughed out of court under the same reasoning as lawsuits by the parents of victims of the Oklahoma City bombing against the manufacturer of the truck or manufacturer of the fertilizer.
If they can make a case against the dealer who sold the gun by alleging that he shouldn't have sold it to the person he sold it to, that would be a different type of case--something more like negligent entrustment of a rental vehicle to a person with a known problem (e.g. a minor, someone with epilepsy, someone obviously drunk, etc.).
The law that has Laci's shorts in a twist was intended to stop the former, not the latter. It was also not intended to stop actual product liability lawsuits--e.g. you should still be able to sue if they sell you a defective gun that fires when it is supposed to be decocking, or that has a defective safety.
If you can show me a place where the law is poorly drafted and is blocking these legitimate types of suits, I'll join you in demanding that it be amended so that it doesn't give special protection from legitimate claims to gun manufacturers. What I won't do is call for the repeal of the entire law to open the way for lawyers to sue them for claims that would never fly if any other product was at issue.
I don't want specially lenient treatment for them; I just don't want specially harsh treatment either. I just want the same liability rules we apply to all other products.
"What Congress tried to do was protect them from lawsuits that never should have been allowed."
DeleteBS! It's not up to Congress to pre decide which case has merit, or not.
That's not what was said anon, but congress does draft the laws with boundaries to prevent lawsuits like this one to even get to the courts in the first place. It's not pre-deciding anything. It setting boundaries within the law, like any other law on the books.
Delete