The Sandy Hook parents have won a $73 million settlement with the bankrupt corpse of Remington Outdoor Company, maker of the AR-15 gun that was used in the Sandy Hook school massacre. And they were able to do so in spite of the federal gun shield law, by using state consumer protection law.
They argued that Remington had an advertising campaign for the gun that ignored the risks of targetting potentially violent or unstable young men, for example an advert with a simple picture of the AR-15 gun and the tagline: “Consider your man card re-issued.”
As part of the settlement, Remington has to release thousands of documents about its advertising and marketing strategy, a remedy that is consistent with the roots of the lawsuit in state consumer protection law.
Remington is bankrupt, so the settlement was actually under the control of its insurance companies. Which has led gun industry spokesmen to say that this settlement was just insurance companies caving. A real gun manufacturer, they say, would have fought to the end, and won.
I guess a litigation “stand your ground” principle? Real gun manufacturers, like real men, will fight to the death. I guess?
NYT article, but Mr Google says there’s a lot of other articles:
Somebody had to pay for all those crisis actors. I heard they work on a percentage of the gross rather than SAG rate so this is quite the payout to them.
I assume bankrupt in this case just means opening up with a new name but still selling the same product. They’ll probably have to tweak their advertising a bit.
I have always been mystified by the desire to hold gun manufacturers accountable when their products are used to kill people. After all, cars and spoons kill lots more people and nobody’s going after THEM. But then, spoon manufacturers aren’t glorifying obesity, and car manufacturers aren’t touting the robustness of their bumpers in pedestrian collisions in their ads. I just don’t come across many firearms ads.
When your product is designed for the sole purpose of killing quickly and easily, doesn’t that imply a unique duty of responsibility in how you market and sell the product?
I am assuming GM was held liable due to reliability problems with certain safety-essential systems in their vehicles.
As far as I know, there’s no reliability problem with firearms made by Remington that could cause bodily harm or injury. Hence there’s no rational reason Remington should be held liable for anything.
If a Remington firearm is used to murder someone, then the firearm is obviously being misused. Why should Remington be held liable for misuse of their products?
Because their advertising invited and encouraged misuse, by marketing it to immature young men, explicitly as a prop for their machismo fantasies.
The analogy would be giving away free cigarette samples outside schools, or implying that Lysol is a safe and effective means to terminate a pregnancy. But it’s far worse than those analogies, given the devastating consequences of misuse of their product.
But I think the auto liability cases are different, because I suspect they are rooted in products that malfunctioned or were defectively designed.
In this case, the legal product worked exactly like it was supposed to. I think this is similar to some of the cases against opiate manufacturers where the allegation is that irresponsible marketing caused the product to be inappropriately prescribed.
I have mixed feelings about the verdict - I like the end result, but I’m not sure that the means by which it was accomplished won’t carry unintended consequences. It’s a shame that the legislature won’t do its job.
It has no precedential value, as it was a settlement, not a verdict. It may mean gun manufacturers will have a harder time getting insurance in the future, which is probably a good thing. Perhaps (ha!) they’ll change the way they market their products.
Not even a new name, really. It’s splitting into two companies. According to their site:
A NEW ERA HAS BEGUN
Remington Firearms and Ammunition are now separate new companies
Remington Firearms to locate global headquarters, open new Advanced Manufacturing Facility, World-Class Research and Development Center in LaGrange
According to this site, the 80,000 foot LaGrange [Georgia] site is temporary while the company determines where to build a “campus.” It’s investing $100 million in the project.
Perhaps, but the insurance companies clearly were not so certain. They paid a whole lot of money to avoid the risk something worse could happen in the courts.
The bigger deal may be the documents that Remington is releasing as part of the settlement. They may be as revealing as the documents disgorged by the tobacco industry.
Not entirely so. The article doesn’t go into much detail, but it cites a case involving the 1979 Chevy Malibu. Like the earlier Ford Pinto, the gas tank could burst into flame when the car was hit from the rear. There was also evidence that GM knew of the problem and chose not to spend the money to fix it. Defective design is one thing; accidents happen. The fact that they knew of the danger and chose to disregard it makes it relevant to this thread.