The state Supreme Court has agreed to hear an appeal from the families of nine victims and one survivor of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting against the maker and sellers of the gun used in the slaying that killed 20 children and six adults.
A Superior Court judge had dismissed the lawsuit, saying the gun manufacturer had immunity against a lawsuit under federal law.
“We are grateful that the Connecticut Supreme Court will hear our case immediately,” said Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was killed in the shooting. “Our goal is and always has been to help prevent the next Sandy Hook, and today is an important step in that direction.”
The appeal was filed in Appellate Court, but the plaintiffs requested the case to be heard by the Supreme Court. The families filed the lawsuit in January 2015 seeking to hold Remington Outdoor Co. liable for the massacre because it marketed a gun to the public it knew was made for military use.
Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from a Bushmaster AR-15 killing 26 people, including the 20 first-graders.
The lawsuit also named Camfour Holding LLP, the gun’s distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales Inc., the East Windsor gun shop where Nancy Lanza, Adam’s mother, bought the AR-15.
In a 54-page written ruling on the widely watched case, Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis agreed with attorneys for Remington Outdoor Co. that the lawsuit “falls squarely within the broad immunity” provided to gun manufacturers and dealers by federal law, specifically the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.
The judge made it clear the families’ claims that the gun company should be held liable for Adam Lanza’s actions did not meet the narrow exceptions the federal law allows.
“Although PLCAA provides a narrow exception under which plaintiffs may maintain an action for negligent entrustment of a firearm, the allegations in the present case do not fit within the common-law tort of negligent entrustment under well-established Connecticut law, nor do they come within PLCAA’s definition of negligent entrustment,” Bellis wrote.
The judge also ruled that the plaintiffs could not win under the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA).
“A plaintiff under CUTPA must allege some kind of consumer, competitor, or other commercial relationship with a defendant, and the plaintiffs here have alleged no such relationship,” the judge wrote.
