ALBANY, N.Y. (Legal Newsline) – The gun industry will appeal a federal judge’s ruling that struck down its challenge of a New York law that will expose them to civil liability for shootings.
That judge, Mae D’Agostino, ruled lawmakers had written the law to fit within an exception to a federal law that protects gun makers against liability for the criminal acts of others. On June 24, the National Shooting Sports Foundation and gun makers like Smith & Wesson filed their notice of appeal to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.
Those plaintiffs sued New York Attorney General Letitia James last year, seeking to block enforcement of General Business Law 898, which passed in July 2021. The gun industry argued the law was preempted by the federal Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act and should also be voided for vagueness.
The law allows the government and private citizens to sue gun sellers over “conduct either unlawful in itself or unreasonable under all the circumstances” that endangers the health and safety of the public.
In a May 25 decision, Judge Mae D’Agostino dismissed the gun industry’s claims. Central to her decision was a holding that the PLCAA contains an exception for lawsuits based on the violation of state or federal laws “applicable to” the sale of guns.
The Second Circuit in 2008 cited the “applicable to” language to reject general public nuisance lawsuits against gunmakers because that law didn’t specifically target the industry, Judge D’Agostino wrote. But in this case, the New York law was written with a narrower focus.
“No reasonable interpretation of `applicable to’ can exclude a statute which imposes liability exclusively on gun manufacturers for the manner in which guns are manufactured, marketed, and sold,” the judge wrote.
The judge also rejected the industry’s Commerce Clause argument that the law discriminated against interstate gun dealers because it didn’t apply to companies that only operated within New York. But the plaintiffs didn’t show that any of the 3,800 licensed firearms dealers in New York only sold weapons in-state, the judge said, meaning there was no “in-state competitor” the law was designed to protect.
Finally, the judge said the law wasn’t impermissibly vague, even though it broadly outlaws “deceptive acts and practices and false advertising” as well as any business practice that a jury might decide creates an unreasonable risk to others.
“Courts regularly provide meaning to the term unreasonable,” the judge wrote.