Firearms maker Smith & Wesson is appealing a federal judge’s decision to force them to defend themselves in Lake County court against lawsuits on behalf of victims of the Highland Park July 4 massacre, but which the company said are actually a creative attempt by anti-gun rights activists to use lawsuits to circumvent federal law and trample Second Amendment rights by punishing gunmakers for the acts of criminals.
According to federal court records, Smith & Wesson filed a notice on Oct. 16, announcing their intent to ask the U.S. Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals to weigh in on the question.
The notice does not yet lay out any arguments Smith & Wesson may make on appeal, but indicates their intent to argue that Judge Seeger erred in ruling that the cases should be heard in Illinois state court.
The lawsuits were filed in September 2022 in Lake County court.
All of the lawsuits center on the July 4, 2022, mass shootings at the Independence Day Parade in suburban Highland Park that killed seven people. The lawsuits were filed against the accused shooter, Robert Crimo III, as well as his father, Robert Crimo Jr., and two firearms stores believed to have been involved Crimo III’s purchase of the weapon he allegedly used in the shooting, a Smith & Wesson M&P (Military & Police) semiautomatic rifle.
The lawsuits, however, also took aim at Smith & Wesson, claiming the world’s largest manufacturer of firearms should bear responsibility for Crimo III’s alleged horrific actions, because the gunmaker allegedly marketed its weapons in ways to make them more appealing to young men, like Crimo III, and made it more likely such massacres could occur.
The lawsuits are similar to those brought against firearms maker Remington over the school shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut in 2012, in which 28 people, including numerous children, were killed. That legal action, brought by family members of the Sandy Hook victims, resulted in a $73 million settlement with Remington, marking the first time plaintiffs had successfully secured such a payment from a firearms manufacturer over a mass shooting.
Many of the same trial lawyers who led the Sandy Hook case have also signed on to represent plaintiffs in the Highland Park cases.
The Highland Park plaintiffs are represented by attorneys from some of the top class action law firms in Chicago and elsewhere in the country, including Romanucci & Blandin, of Chicago; Edelson P.C., of Chicago; and Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, of New York.
But they are also joined by lawyers from some of the country’s leading gun control advocacy organizations, including Everytown USA and the Brady Campaign. These organizations have prominently campaigned for policies that restrict or outright outlaw ownership of firearms in the U.S.
When the Highland Park lawsuits were filed, those organizations made no secret about their intent to use the lawsuits to further their gun control goals or to financially punish Smith & Wesson.
In response to the lawsuits, Smith & Wesson moved to take the cases to federal court, asserting the actions represented an attempt to win court orders that would conflict with federal law and infringe on the Second Amendment.
Smith & Wesson, for instance, argued the lawsuits claim the gun maker rely on claims that Smith & Wesson improperly sold and marketed a “machine gun,” even though the M&P rifle allegedly used by Crimo III is not designated as an illegal automatic weapon under federal law or federal rules.
Smith & Wesson said the lawsuits represent an attempt by plaintiffs to “improperly overturn the (federal government’s) determination that semi-automatic rifles, like the M&P rifle, are not ‘machine guns’” subject to federal regulation.
Smith & Wesson asserted that allowing a state judge to rule that the company illegally marketed and sold “machine guns” would allow that judge to overrule federal law and instantly make “criminals out of millions of law-abiding … rifle owners” who possess M&P rifles or other similar semiautomatic weapons.
Judge Seeger, however, rejected those arguments.
In his ruling, Seeger said the Highland Park plaintiffs should be allowed to sue gun makers under Illinois’ consumer fraud and deceptive practices law and other state laws because the judge did not believe plaintiffs need to prove the Smith & Wesson ever “offended public policy” under the federal statutes regulating automatic weapons.
He said the allegations about “deceptive conduct form a standalone theory that does not rely on federal law.”
Therefore, the judge said, the cases belong in Illinois state court in Lake County, and not in federal court.
Smith & Wesson will ask the appeals court to overturn that determination, and keep the cases out of a state court system famously regarded as among the most friendly to plaintiffs in the U.S.
Smith & Wesson is represented in the action by attorneys from the firms of Swanson, Martin & Bell, of Chicago; and DLA Piper, of Chicago and Washington, D.C.