Court-watchers were beginning to wonder who was next.
First the attorneys general of most of the states found success in their efforts to extort billions of dollars from the tobacco industry, hauling cigarette manufacturers into court to demand payment for the "health care costs" of sickened cigarette smokers.
(In the real world, of course, cigarette smokers tend to die younger and thus run up (start ital)lower(end ital) lifetime health care costs; states have no obligation to pay their health care costs in the first place; and states have proceeded to use the resultant booty for nearly everything (start ital)but(end ital) the health care of sick smokers.)
Then a number of cities, most prominently Chicago and New Orleans, decided they might be able to extort even more funds by suing handgun manufacturers, contending the gun makers were responsible for the ambulance and emergency room bills of young drug dealers who shoot each other or get shot by cops while in the commission of various crimes.
The nation waited with bated breath. How long could it be before someone figured out how much money awaited the first jurisdiction to stumble on the exigency of suing GM or Toyota for al the costs resulting from automobile accidents? From the offices of the tort lawyers, the sound of pencils being sharpened could be heard late into the night.
Fortunately, at least in one jurisdiction, common sense has now prevailed.
In what The Associated Press is calling the first dismissal of such a case, Hamilton County (Ohio) Common Pleas Judge Robert Ruehlman last week threw out Cincinnati's lawsuit against 14 firearms manufacturers, ruling the city's claims were vague and unsupported by legal precedent.
The city intends to appeal the decision within a few days, said Stanley M. Chesley, attorney for the city.
But Judge Ruehlman didn't beat about the bush. He threw out the lawsuit without even allowing the city to proceed with "discovery" -- using blanket subpoenas to beat the bushes for documents, hoping to find in the files of Taurus or Smith & Wesson or Beretta a smoking, "Let's hope this doesn't get out" memo.
The city's suit demanded reimbursement for the costs of providing police, mergency, court and prison services in connection with shootings in the city -- not only homicides, but also accidents and suicides.
Suicides? Join the line, all you pharmaceutical, bathtub, and rope manufacturers.
But Judge Ruehlman found only the Legislature, not the courts, has authority to regulate product design and marketing. He also rejected Cincinnati's allegations of design defects and failure to warn users of possible risks from the use of guns so well-designed that even police forces carry them.
"There can be liability for failure to warn only if the risk is not open and obvious or a matter of common knowledge," Judge Ruehlman wrote in his five-page ruling. "The risks associated with the use of a firearm," on the other hand, "are open and obvious and matters of common knowledge."
Without even mentioning that Americans have a constitutional right to keep and bear them -- precisely the right the plaintiffs hope to finesse out of existence with this indirect attack.
"It very clearly points out the weaknesses in the other cities' suits," was the immediate response of Jim Dorr, a Chicago lawyer who represents handgun manufacturers Sturm, Ruger & Co. Inc. of Southport, Conn., and Smith & Wesson Corp. of Springfield, Mass.
But the ruling may have come too late for civilians wishing to purchase new handguns manufactured by Colt's Manufacturing Co., one of the defendants.
Just as those who dreamed up this strategy had hoped, Colt -- a firm which has done better with military rifle contracts in recent decades than with its vintage line of handguns, and which now finds itself in the hands of a foreign national with no love of civilian gun ownership -- announced just before Judge Ruehlman's action that it will suspend or cease sales to the civilian market.
The firearms manufacturers would have done better to adopt the advice of net correspondent Jon Roland, who on Oct. 4 advised, in part:
1) Immediately cease all sales or product deliveries to the police departments of the cities filing suit, and threaten to cease sales or deliveries to any dealers who sell to them.
2) Advise plaintiffs that if all lawsuits are not withdrawn within 10 days, all involved manufacturers will cease sales or product deliveries to law enforcement and military organizations in the United States. Only civilians will be allowed to purchase their products.
3) If the suits cause costs to increase till it becomes prohibitive to manufacture for the civilian market, immediately release all designs to the public domain, publishing them on the Internet, and begin training civilians to manufacture their own firearms and ammunition.
Good plan. We've taken this lying down, long enough.
Vin Suprynowicz is the assistant editorial page editor of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. His new book, "Send in the Waco Killers: Essays on the Freedom Movement, 1993-1998," is available at 1-800-244-2224, or via web site http://www.thespiritof76.com/wacokillers.html.
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Vin Suprynowicz, vin@lvrj.com
"The evils of tyranny are rarely seen but by him who resists it." -- John Hay, 1872
"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed -- and thus clamorous to be led to safety -- by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." -- H.L. Mencken
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