25
‘We can
sue almost
everybody
for
anything,
yet we
cannot
touch gun
makers.
That’s a big
reason we
have a gun
problem.’
CHRISTINE
LEINONEN,
whose son died in
the Pulse shootingons. But when Leinonen saw the chal-
lenge of taking on the gun industry, she
sued Google, Facebook and Twitter in-
stead, alleging the Internet giants played
a role in the shooter’s untempered radi-
calization. “We can sue almost every-
body for anything, yet we cannot touch
gun makers,” Leinonen says. “That’s a big
reason we have a gun problem.”
A federal judge dismissed the suit in
March 2018, which Leinonen expected.
“The argument with the Internet was a
weak argument but possible,” she says.
“The argument against the gun manu-
facturer was impossible.”
On Nov. 14, 2018, a federal judge
dismissed the civil suit against Gruler,
the city and the unnamed officers. The
plaintiffs have appealed. Gruler, 43, de-
clined comment because of the pending
litigation. His attorneys did not return
requests for comment.Families in mourning have many rea-
sons for pursuing litigation after trage-
dies. A hunger for justice propels most of
them. So does the desire to change laws.
After Rhonda Hart’s 14-year-old daugh-
ter Kimberly Vaughan died at Santa Fe
High School in Texas on May 18, 2018,Hart sued the parents of Dimitrios Pagourtzis, who’s accused
of killing eight students and two teachers with a shotgun and a
revolver. The lawsuit says the parents knew their son was a pos-
sible danger but “did not do even the bare minimum” to keep
him from accessing his father’s weapons, an allegation denied
by the parents’ attorney, Ron Rodgers. “As far as they knew, he
was a responsible and well-adjusted kid,” Rodgers says.
Hart’s main goal in suing is to strengthen gun-storage laws.
“That would be a way bigger victory,” she says. The family of
Sabika Sheikh, a 17-year-old exchange student from Pakistan
who also died in the massacre, is also suing the parents. Sabika,
an aspiring diplomat, hid in a classroom closet, where she was
shot nine times in the head and right shoulder. “She was really
unassuming because she did not grow up in a culture of gun
violence in school,” says her cousin Shaheera Albasit.
Albasit, Hart and Leinonen say the massacres that ripped
their loved ones from them were sparked by multiple failings.
When that’s the case, they say, all parties should answer for
them. “There are good reasons for lawsuits to take place,” says
Leinonen. “You have to look at the entire puzzle.”
Major automobile companies have shelled out billions of
dollars in settlements over design flaws and defective airbags
and other faulty parts. In cases of accidental death or injury
on international flights, airlines must pay families a minimum
liability, regardless of fault, of about $170,000 per victim, ac-
cording to the international Montreal Convention agreement.
Yet despite roughly 265 million civilian-owned firearms in cir-
culation in the U.S. and tens of thousands of shooting deaths
every year, no other U.S. industry is as guarded from liability
as the gun industry, critics say. Taking on manufacturers and
sellers of firearms and ammunition is technically possible in a
few circumstances: if a defective weapon causes death or in-
jury, for example, or if a seller or manufacturer is found to have
violated a law in the marketing or sale of a product. But it’s not
easy. Families that try face years in court and risk financial ruin.
When Sandy and Lonnie Phillips sued an online company that
sold the ammunition a gunman used to murder their daughter
and 11 others in a movie theater in Aurora, Colo., in 2012, they
lost the case and went bankrupt after a judge ordered them to
pay more than $200,000 to cover the defendant’s legal fees—a
consequence unique to Colorado.
In March, the Sandy Hook plaintiffs won a victory when
the Connecticut supreme court ruled that Remington could
be sued over its marketing tactics. The suit is on hold while
the U.S. Supreme Court decides whether to grant Remington’s
request for a review of the lower court’s decision. According
to Lawrence Keane, a senior vice president for the National
Shooting Sports Foundation, a gun trade group, allowing Rem-
ington to be sued for the Sandy Hook shooter’s actions is as
senseless as holding an auto maker responsible for a drunk
driver’s actions. “The person who engages in that criminal con-
duct is responsible,” Keane says, not the product manufacturer.
Koskoff hopes the Sandy Hook lawsuit encourages more
people to go after gun companies, which he calls the “root
cause” of the gun-violence problem, instead of suing perceived
“easier” targets like security guards. “Whenever victims sue in
mass shootings everyone and anybody but the gun industry, it’s
BRENDAN SMIALOWSKI—AFP/GETTY IMAGES nothing but a win for the gun industry,” he says. □