Glock will seek to force the city of Chicago to try its potentially massive lawsuit against the firearms maker in federal court, rather than Cook County court, as the city seeks to blame Glock and make them pay for allegedly making the city's well-documented gun violence problems worse.
The lawsuit specifically says Glock must pay because it allegedly designed its semi automatic pistols in such a way that they are easily modified into allegedly fully automatic "machine guns."
A semi automatic weapon fires one shot for each time the trigger is pulled. An automatic weapon fires multiple rounds per squeeze of the trigger.
Corporate defendants often seek to move lawsuits against them to federal court to better defend themselves under the federal courts' generally stricter standards. Illinois state courts, such as Cook County's courts, have built a reputation of being notoriously friendly to plaintiffs, with much more lax standards to prove injury under the law and wider latitude for trial lawyers to present evidence allegedly backing their claims.
Cook County, for instance, has been ranked among the country's worst "Judicial Hellholes" by legal reform advocates, including the American Tort Reform Association, for the relative ease with which plaintiffs win.
Further, Cook County's courts are dominated by Democratic judges, often chosen by Democratic Party leaders. The Democratic Party is noted for its strong stance in favor of strict gun regulation, such as controversial bans on so-called "assault weapons," including one in Illinois enacted by the state's Democratic legislative supermajority. Illinois' law has been challenged in court as a violation of the Second Amendment, but so far without success, pending appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
The city's lawsuit claims Glock's guns can be modified using only a screwdriver and a $20 part, which the complaint asserts are commonly known as "Glock switches," as they allegedly allow users to "toggle" the weapons between semi-automatic and automatic rates of weapons fire.
Glock does not sell the so-called "Glock switch" part.
The city's lawsuit does not directly blame Glock for causing Chicago's "epidemic of gun violence." But the complaint asserts Glock should pay for allegedly making it easier than it should be for criminals to use Glock's weapons to commit violent crimes.
The lawsuit claims Chicago Police seized more than 1,110 such modified Glock pistols from 2021-2023, and federal agents seized more than 8,000 modified Glock pistols from 2017-2021, allegedly making modified Glocks easily the most popular kind of firearm used by criminals in Chicago.
The lawsuit claims Glock allegedly has long known about the modification, but has done little to remedy it. The lawsuit further claims similar weapons made by Glock's competitors aren't so easily modified.
The lawsuit became the first filed against a gun maker under a new state law, specifically enacted to allow such lawsuits against firearms sellers.
The law, which revised Illinois' consumer fraud law, was designed to allow the city of Chicago and perhaps others to build on left-wing activists' and trial lawyers' strategy of using lawsuits to advance progressive policy goals and punish companies making products or selling services that left-wing activists wish to end.
Trial lawyers in Illinois, for instance, have partnered with anti-gun rights groups, such as Everytown, to sue firearms maker Smith & Wesson, claiming they must pay potentially many millions of dollars for allegedly wrongly marketing their semi automatic rifles to entice young men to purchase them. They say this marketing led the man charged with killing seven people in Highland Park 4th of July Parade in 2022 to purchase the rifle allegedly used in the massacre.
Gun makers and Second Amendment rights supporters have described such litigation as thinly veiled attempts to use lawsuits to step around the Second Amendment and infringe on Americans' rights, by limiting supply.
Meanwhile, the city of Chicago has joined other cities and states to file lawsuits against oil and gas companies in the name of extracting potentially massive payments from the energy companies in the name of fighting climate change. In that action, City Hall claims the energy companies should pay for allegedly misleading consumers into using oil and natural gas to fuel automobiles and to heat and power homes and businesses, and other crucial segments of the U.S. economy.
And in 2023, the city of Chicago also sued automakers Kia and Hyundai, claiming those companies should shoulder the blame for the city's plague of auto thefts, because the automakers allegedly made their cars too easy to steal.
In the lawsuit against Glock, the city also claims Glock deceived the public by selling semi automatic weapons which were too easily converted to automatic.
In its request to take the case to federal court, Glock does not yet seek to counter the city's claims.
Rather, the company claims the lawsuit belongs in federal court purely on procedural grounds, as Glock is not based in Illinois and the case involves potentially many millions of dollars in potential penalties.
The city is seeking to force Glock to pay fines of $10,000 "per violation per day" under a city ordinance, and to order Glock to pay the city its profits allegedly "obtained through unlawful practices."
The city also seeks to make Glock pay for allegedly causing a public nuisance, and to pay "a sum of money that will allow the city to abate the nuisance that Glock has created."
Glock is represented in the case by attorneys Michael L. Rice and Holly A. Harrison, of Harrison Law LLC, of Chicago; and John F. Renzulli, Christopher Renzulli and Scott C. Allan, of Renzulli Law Firm, of White Plains, New York.
In addition to attorneys from Everytown Law and the city's Department of Law, the city is represented in the action by attorneys H. Christopher Boehning, Emily G. Sasso, Maria E. Eliot and Sraavya Poonuganti, of the firm of Paul Weiss Rifkind Wharton & Garrison, of New York and Washington, D.C.