Grief, Anger Fuel Fight Against Gun Maker : Violence: Lawsuit is part of a campaign mounted by families of those slain in San Francisco massacre. They are heartened by recent ruling but face formidable hurdles.

Kristen Merrill, 5, draws crayon pictures of herself and her little brother and leaves them on their slain father’s tombstone. Supermarket flowers excite her. “Oh mommy,” she gushes. “Those would be so nice on Daddy’s grave.”

Her mother recounts all of this with a quiet anger directed not at the deranged man who killed himself after murdering her husband and seven others in a San Francisco high-rise, but at the company that made the weapons the assailant fired.

She and others who lost loved ones in the 1993 massacre at 101 California St. have mounted a campaign against assault weapons, traveling to Washington to testify in favor of a ban, appearing with their children in front of news cameras from around the world, and suing the manufacturers of the weapons.

The survivors recently scored what some saw as a stunning legal victory when a San Francisco judge decided that they had legal grounds to proceed with wrongful death lawsuits against the manufacturer of the semiautomatic assault weapons used by Gian Luigi Ferri of Woodland Hills.

The landmark decision was a step forward for gun control advocates, who have largely failed in the past to press their cause in the courts. The ruling also sent a cautionary message to gun makers that they might be held responsible for bloodshed inflicted with their products. For the survivors of the Ferri shooting, the judge’s decision meant vindication.

“There is a selfish reason why I am doing what I am doing,” said Marilyn Merrill, 45, who brings her daughter to gun control news conferences. “I want Kristen to be able to say, ‘Yes, Daddy was murdered. But look what we were able to do to make a difference.’ ”

Merrill talked in her living room in an affluent gated development in suburban Contra Costa County, where visitors are checked in by a security guard, speed bumps line the streets and the large houses must conform to landscaping and other codes. Surrounded by rolling oak-studded hills, the order and security of the new development seem a world away from the carnage of July 1, 1993.

On that afternoon, Ferri entered the law offices of Pettit & Martin, which had once represented him, and began a bloody vendetta against lawyers. The gunman continued his rampage onto other floors and into the offices of Trust Co. of the West, where Michael Merrill, 48, worked as a vice president.

Ferri shot Merrill through his glass window as he sat at his desk. The wounded Merrill managed to crawl under his desk, but Ferri returned several minutes later. He entered Merrill’s office, pointed his weapon at the desktop and fired some more. Marilyn Merrill believes that her husband survived only 20 minutes.

Although the ruling by San Francisco Superior Court Judge James Warren gratified Merrill and other plaintiffs, legal analysts cited potential hurdles that must be overcome before the victims can prevail over the weapon’s manufacturer on the negligence and strict liability claims.

Warren, the grandson of former U.S. Supreme Court Chief Justice Earl Warren, based his novel ruling on a 1989 state law that bans certain kinds of assault weapons. The law outlawed several guns by name and “any other models which are only variations of these weapons.”

In ruling for the plaintiffs, Warren held that the gun maker had violated state policy. “But it is very unclear whether there was a violation,” said UCLA law professor Gary Schwartz after reading the judge’s opinion.

Ferri, who killed himself before he could be taken into custody, fired a semiautomatic weapon called the TEC-DC9, a modified version of the banned TEC-9.

The plaintiffs contend that the only difference is that the sling on the later model is in a different place. They also argue that the gun was sold and marketed in California in violation of the ban.

The manufacturer is expected to counter that the newer model was not prohibited. An industry spokesman noted that state Atty. Gen. Dan Lungren’s office has told owners inquiring about the law that they need not register that model as a banned weapon.

That is because courts have blocked the state from adding more weapons to the banned list, even when the language of the law clearly seems to include them, said Steven Telliano, a spokesman for Lungren. A lawsuit brought by a gun manufacturer against the law is pending in the Court of Appeal in Sacramento.

Another possible hurdle for the plaintiffs is the fact that Ferri purchased the guns in Nevada, where they are legal. The plaintiffs could argue that he acted in response to illegal marketing in California, but “it is a very complicated question,” Schwartz said.

Some analysts predicted that the April 11 ruling would encourage more lawsuits against makers of other products that are banned as dangerous in some states but not in others. But others regarded the decision as relatively narrow, applying to gun cases only.

The survivors of the shooting victims argue that Navegar Inc., the holding company of Intratec, the maker of the semi-assault weapons Ferri used, marketed them to attract criminals. Advertisements proclaimed them to be “as tough as your toughest customer” and resistant to fingerprints.

“This company was really pushing the envelope,” said William D. Kissinger, Merrill’s lawyer, who argues that the company could have foreseen that the weapons would wind up in California.

But Ernest Getto, Navegar’s lawyer, said the “tough customer” language was borrowed from a car commercial, and the fingerprint claim referred to a coating on the guns that prevents human oil from corroding the weapon.

The families of the victims were denied the catharsis of seeing Ferri brought to trial, so they turned on the manufacturer instead, said Richard Feldman, spokesman for the gun industry’s American Shooting Sports Council.

“They are reaching out and wanting to blame somebody, anybody, which is natural,” Feldman said, “and they have been encouraged by people of a whole separate political agenda to blame the gun maker.”

Michelle Scully, one of the shooting victims, insists that gun makers are at fault. She has volunteered full-time to help gun control groups since her husband, John, was killed in Ferri’s spree.

Semiautomatic assault weapons are now banned nationally under the 1994 crime bill. But “the manufacturers are making cosmetic changes and name changes and putting them back out there to get around the federal assault weapon ban,” said Scully, 29.

Scully, a lawyer, was doing research at Pettit & Martin when Ferri began his assault. Her husband, an attorney employed by the firm, heard “pops” and ran down a flight of stairs to tell his wife of nine months that people were evacuating the building. She thought that someone was playing a Fourth of July prank.

As the couple ambled down a hallway, they saw Ferri approach a young man walking ahead of them. They heard “pops” and saw the young man collapse in a pool of blood.

The couple turned and ran into an office, but Ferri followed and found them crouching against a wall. He said nothing. “He had this very, very blank look in his eyes,” Michelle Scully said. She closed her eyes when Ferri began shooting. Her husband threw himself over her.

After Ferri left, John Scully asked his wife if she had been hit. She didn’t think so, although she later realized that she had been shot in the right arm. Her husband, 28, was badly wounded.

“ ‘Michelle, I am dying,’ ” he told her, looking up at her. “‘I love you.’ ”

If Ferri had a less powerful weapon, she said, someone could have stopped him when he tried to reload. The victims would have had a chance, she said.

Like other victims of Ferri’s demented rage, she is alarmed by loud popping noises. Even young Kristen Merrill became unglued when another child at a party began playing with a cap gun, her mother said.

The Merrills moved from Oakland to their suburban home six months after the murders. Michael Merrill had helped design the house. Its bare walls and not-yet-landscaped yards give it an unfinished look, as though its occupants remain unsettled.

“Sometimes I feel so bad because the home would be so different if Mike were alive,” said Merrill, who has long, graying brown hair parted in the middle. “He was so proud of this house.”