Appeal gives Newtown families hope in a suit against gun companies

NEWTOWN, Conn. — In the years since his 6-yearold son Benjamin was fatally shot at Sandy Hook Elementary School, David Wheeler has testified before state legislatures, lobbied members of Congress and sat beside his wife, Francine, as she delivered a speech during one of President Barack Obama’s weekly addresses, pleading for changes to the nation’s gun laws.

This week, the families of the victims plan to be in Hartford, listening as lawyers lay out in state Supreme Court their case that the companies that manufactured and sold the military-style assault rifle used by the gunman bear responsibility for the attack in which 26 people, including 20 children, were killed.

They are deploying a novel strategy that the families and their lawyers say could pierce the sweeping shield created by federal law that protects gun companies from litigation and has thwarted countless lawsuits after their weapons were used to commit crimes.

Supporters believe that if the court clears the way for a jury trial, the gun companies’ internal communications — which the companies have fought fiercely to keep private — would surface in discovery, a potentially revealing and damaging glimpse into the industry and how it operates. It could also chart a legal road map for the survivors and relatives of victims in other mass shootings as they pursue accountability.

“It doesn’t make any sense at all that these products are free of liability,” David Wheeler said in a recent interview. “It’s not a level playing field. It’s not American capitalistic business practice as we know it. It’s just not right.”

The high stakes the case represents has drawn widespread interest and an intense response from both sides of the gun debate. The court has been inundated with amicus briefs — from gun control advocates and emergency room doctors who have treated patients wounded by assault rifle fire as well as from many gunrights groups. In its brief, the National Rifle Association argued that allowing the case to move forward threatened to “eviscerate” the gun companies’ legal protections.

The Supreme Court hearing, after years of backand-forth in other courts, comes as the fifth anniversary of the Newtown massacre approaches next month and falls in the shadow of recurring episodes of mass violence that have reinvigorated national debate over the sale of weapons like the AR-15 style Bushmaster rifle used in Newtown.

Some argue the recent massacres, serving as a reminder of the toll weapons like the one used in Newtown can have, could lend credence to the lawsuit’s claims. “It’s like the world has thrown up Exhibit A for the plaintiffs’ argument,” said Heidi Li Feldman, a Georgetown University law professor and expert who has followed the case.

But those opposing the Newtown families argue that the lawsuit is specifically the kind of legal challenge the federal protections were designed to block and that the litigation is simply an effort to use the courts as a forum to regulate gun laws.