That's for the legal system to decide. If it's a frivolous lawsuit, then it will be tossed
There are frivolous lawsuits filed everyday.....There is zero excuse for blanket immunity...no other industry has such a protection.
If I make a sauce pan and you use it to bash someone’s Head in how am I responsible? The end run is an effective gun ban by suing the pant s of people in frivolous lawsuits.... just like outlawing certain ammo....
Clever end runs isn’t going to address the issue. Gotta bring what’s important to you to the table to get somewhere.
@CO. Hoosier can explain it better than I.
I don't think a maker and seller of pots and pans will be liable when it is used as a weapon. Why? Because the pots and pans maker isn't marketing the item as a weapon and its use as a weapon is not foreseeable.
Consideration of this question presupposes a product that is not only inherently dangerous but is made, marketed, and sold in a manner where damages and injury from it are foreseeable. The courts will engage in a balancing test--the social utility of the item vs. its risk of harm.
These cases are not about the industry being liable for the misuse of the product. The law doesn't permit that under most circumstances. The theory of liability rests on the conduct of the provider of the product and how it choses to market the product.
Using the balancing test, the civil justice system has determined:
190 degree coffee, which causes third degree burns in a few seconds, presents an unreasonable risk of harm when served to a customer in a moving vehicle. Cooler coffee in the 140 degree range does not cause burns and does not lessen the utility of the product.
3-wheeled ATV's are dangerous and should not be sold.
Motorcycles without sissy bars, while carrying an increased risk of harm than those with, have utility that outweighs the danger.
IMO, an automobile sold today without air bags would carry an unreasonable risk of harm given air bag technology. The existence of federal regs complicates this issue. But the civil justice system had made automobiles safer--the shape of dashboard knobs is one example.
I've linked this before. The drug companies are beginning to take incoming from the trial lawyers over the way they are making and distributing opioids. These cases are applying the balancing test.
The point is that the civil justice system indeed helps keep all of us safer. The civil justice system does that by putting economic risk of loss on the people who receive the economic benefit of providing the product in question. This is called free market and is a concept that goes back hundreds of years into English common law. The immunity legislation throws all of this into a cocked hat by misplacing the risk of loss for damage and injury. There were a number of gun cases pending and threatened that resulted in the immunity legislation. One of those was a claim based on too many guns being distributed in the Chicago suburbs leading to the foreseeable conclusion that those guns were being resold in the black market of the back alleys of Chicago. This is similar to the claim against the opioids about too many pills being pumped into small rural areas.
In the case of guns, I think the jury should determine if the providers of guns have any responsibility along with the economic benefit they receive from selling weapons like the AR 15, high capacity magazines, and unlimited high kinetic energy rounds, all unrestricted to the anybody who manages to pass a background check.
Finally,
look at how the Fort Hood shooter bought his guns and ammo. If we didn't have immunity I think the seller would be at risk. Even the prospect of civil liability would likely lessen the amount of guns and ammo sold, and it might even result in certain weapons not being sold at all, like the 3 wheeled ATV.
