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Breaking News from America's Progressive Community... Latest Releases
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| OCTOBER 30, 1998
2:30 PM FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE CONTACT: Handgun Control |
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| New Orleans First City To Sue Gun Manufacturers; Center To Prevent Handgun Violence Co-Counsel In Landmark Lawsuit | ||||
| NEW ORLEANS -
October 30 - New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial today announced that the
City of New Orleans has filed the first-ever lawsuit by a city or other government against
the gun industry. The suit names fifteen gun manufacturers, three trade associations
and several local pawnshops and gun dealers, and seeks to recover the damage to the City
from the gun industry’s sale of guns that are not "personalized" to
incorporate safety designs to prevent their use by children and other unauthorized users.
The Legal Action Project of the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, which for five
years has been bringing innovative lawsuits against the gun industry, has agreed to serve
as co-counsel for the City’s lawsuit. Lousiana attorney Wendell H. Gauthier, an
architect of the legal strategy used against the tobacco industry, will also represent the
City in its suit. "We have been so focused here in New Orleans on fighting crime, getting guns off the street and protecting our citizens," said Mayor Morial. "We have already reduced crime in New Orleans by 40% since 1994. This lawsuit is the next step in making New Orleans the safest city in America." "This lawsuit is a turning point in our efforts to force the gun industry to make a safer, childproof, ‘personalized’ product," said Dennis Henigan, Director of the Center’s Legal Action Project and a national expert on the application of product liability law to the firearms industry. "Mayor Morial is showing great courage in becoming the first mayor to take the gun industry to court, and we expect that other big-city mayors may well follow his lead. It’s time for the gun industry to be held accountable for the cost of the thousands of tragedies and millions of dollars gun violence inflicts on our nation’s cities." This year, several urban mayors including Mayor Ed Rendell of Philadelphia, Mayor Alex Penelas of Miami-Dade County, and Mayor Richard Daley of Chicago have expressed interest in following the tobacco example in recovering costs from the gun industry. In the last six months, the gun industry’s most powerful trade group, the American Shooting Sports Council, has repeatedly met with big-city mayors to deny responsibility for the design of its manufacturers’ products in an attempt to ward off the type of lawsuit now filed by New Orleans. The American Shooting Sports Council is named as a defendant in the New Orleans lawsuit, along with leading gun manufacturers including Smith & Wesson, Sturm Ruger, Beretta U.S.A., Colt, Glock, Lorcin, Bryco, Jennings and Navegar. "The gun industry has hid behind its mouthpieces at the NRA for many years, but those days are now over," Henigan said. "The money that manufacturers spent on pro-gun propaganda and misleading advertising could have been used to make guns that can only be fired by authorized owners, sparing us thousands of homicides, suicides and accidents." "Under the Louisiana product liability statute, a manufacturer can be held liable for damage caused by a product that is unreasonably dangerous in design. In this lawsuit, the City is alleging that guns that fail to incorporate safety systems that prevent their use by children and other unauthorized users are unreasonably dangerous in design. Just as car manufacturers have been held liable for failing to install seat belts and air bags, gun makers should be liable for failing to install feasible safety systems to prevent serious injuries and deaths." Coincidentally, Center attorneys are also in trial in Oakland, CA representing the parents of a child accidentally killed by a gun that lacked any safety features that could have prevented the accident. In Dix v. Beretta, the Center’s lawyers ask that Beretta U.S.A. be held responsible for the death of Kenzo Dix, who was killed by a close friend who believed he had unloaded the gun he had found. Kenzo was killed by a bullet that remained in the gun’s chamber, and the Center is asking for damages for failing to implement feasible design changes that would have prevented the gun from being fired by children. The Dix case is expected to go to the jury in early November. "Why should the innocent citizens of this City, or any other city, bear the costs of gun violence while the gun industry pays nothing?" Henigan said. "No longer must it be permitted to evade its share of the responsibility for protecting our communities and particularly our children from senseless shootings. Mayor Morial today has filed a lawsuit to save lives. We are all indebted to him." # # # The Center to Prevent Handgun Violence, chaired by Sarah Brady, was founded in 1983 to reduce gun violence through education, legal advocacy, research, and outreach to the entertainment community. Based in Washington, DC, CPHV’s national initiatives include prevention programs for parents and youth on the risks associated with guns, legal representation for gun violence victims, work with the entertainment community to encourage deglamorization of guns in the media, and research of the risks associated with guns and the efficacy of gun control laws. |
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