Decision Favors Gun Makers
Gun manufacturers were not responsible for the actions of a white supremacist who killed a Filipino American postal worker after wounding five people at a Jewish community center in 1999, a Los Angeles federal judge ruled Monday.
U.S. District Judge Audrey B. Collins dismissed a damage suit brought by the mother of slain letter carrier Joseph S. Ileto and the parents of three children wounded when Buford O. Furrow Jr. sprayed the center with automatic weapons fire on Aug. 10, 1999.
While expressing sympathy for the victims, Collins said their lawsuit failed to demonstrate a link between the gun makers and Furrow’s shooting rampage.
Peter Nordberg, a Philadelphia lawyer who represents the victims, said he would confer with his clients and other lawyers in the case before deciding whether to appeal.
Furrow, a convicted felon with a history of mental instability, had an arsenal of assault-style weapons in his possession when he shot up the North Valley Jewish Community Center in Granada Hills and later killed Ileto, who was delivering mail in Chatsworth.
The weapons included an Austrian-made Glock 9-millimeter handgun; a 9-millimeter rifle with an illegally shortened barrel made by Norinco, an arm of the Chinese military; a .223-caliber rifle from Bushmaster of Maine; two .308-caliber rifles made by Imbel of Brazil; an Egyptian Maadi rifle and a .22-caliber handgun manufactured by Davis Industries, a California corporation.
Exactly one year ago today, Furrow was sentenced to multiple life terms in prison after negotiating a plea agreement that spared him from having to face a possible death sentence for Ileto’s slaying.
The lawsuit against the gun manufacturers was filed in Los Angeles Superior Court but was transferred to federal court because Norinco is owned by the Chinese government.
Lawyers for the victims leveled a broad attack on the gun makers’ marketing practices. They accused Glock and the other defendants of producing and distributing substantially more firearms than could possibly be bought by law-abiding customers.
Many of those weapons are sold at gun shows and through “kitchen-table” dealers who may be licensed but are loosely regulated, the lawsuit charged.
The suit contended that the manufacturers often advertise their products with the illicit market in mind. It singled out Glock’s promotion of its 9-millimeter “pocket rocket” concealable handgun, the one Furrow is believed to have used when he killed Ileto.
In all, the suit argued, the gun manufacturers were guilty of negligence and being a dangerous public nuisance.
But in a 37-page draft opinion, Collins said the plaintiffs had failed to show a link between the manufacturers’ marketing policies and Furrow’s crime.
“While it may be foreseeable that some criminals might obtain Glock firearms and use them to harm others,” she wrote, “there was no way of foreseeing that this particular individual [Furrow] would obtain a Glock firearm and use it to injure these plaintiffs.”
Collins said she was influenced by California’s product liability law, which “evidences an intent to hold shooters, not manufacturers, responsible for gun violence.”
Collins also dismissed the claim that the gun manufacturers’ distribution methods created a public nuisance under California law.
She said the nuisance law does not apply to the lawful manufacture and sale of non-defective products.
In court Monday were plaintiffs Loren Lieb and Alan Stepakoff, whose son, Joshua, then 6, was shot in the leg and hip. They declined to comment on the ruling.
Koji Fukumura, an attorney for Norinco, praised Collins’ ruling, saying she “came to the only conclusion possible under California law--that these defendants owed no duty to prevent Buford Furrow from committing his heinous acts.”
