Saying the law is designed to fuel lawsuits that would allow the city of Chicago and others to unconstitutionally sidestep the Second Amendment and federal law to effectively ban the sale of certain kinds of guns, gunmaker Glock has asked a court to not only toss Chicago's gun violence lawsuit against them, but strike down the modification of Illinois' consumer fraud law on which the city's lawsuit is founded.
"Just as Chicago looks to blame certain carmakers for the City's inability to stop auto thefts in the City, Chicago seeks to place the blame on Glock, Inc. for crime involving the use of Modified Glock Pistols," Glock wrote in a recent court filing.
"Chicago does not claim that Glock pistols fail to function properly when they are sold by Glock, Inc. and, in light of their popularity and reliability, does not seek to restrict their sale to, or use by, law enforcement.
Attorney Michael Rice
| Harrison Law LLC
"Through this lawsuit, however, the City of Chicago seeks to have this Court issue an injunction barring Glock, Inc. from selling Glock pistols to consumers through Illinois gun stores that serve the Chicago market."
On Oct. 30, Georgia-based Glock Inc. filed a motion in Cook County Circuit Court to dismiss the city of Chicago's lawsuit.
Local gun shops that are also targeted as defendants in Chicago's lawsuit also filed separate motions to dismiss.
Chicago City Hall launched the legal action against Glock in March.
The administration of Mayor Brandon Johnson has partnered in the action gun control activist organization Everytown USA.
The lawsuit asserted Glock must pay because it allegedly has designed its semi-automatic pistols in such a way that they were 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.
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. Such "switches" are also generally known as "auto sears."
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 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 - in this case, Glock's popular lines of semi-automatic handguns.
The law was signed by Gov. JB Pritzker in August 2023.
After Glock took the case to federal court, the city withdrew the initial version of the lawsuit. But that was immediately followed by a new action which also added local gun shops as defendants, as well, in an apparent bid to not only block those shops from selling Glock pistols and extract payment, but also keep the case from returning to federal court.
Lawsuits can be removed to federal court if they satisfy certain criteria, including whether they make claims under federal law or the U.S. Constitution; if they implicate federal laws or regulations; and if they involve plaintiffs and defendants from different states or local jurisdictions.
Plaintiffs seeking to keep lawsuits out of federal court will often add local defendants to defeat such claims of jurisdictional diversity.
The lawsuit seeks potentially massive financial damages from Glock for allegedly violating a Chicago city ordinance, which the city should be implicated under the revised state consumer fraud law.
They also seek a court order forbidding Glock and the shops from selling "pistols that can be easily converted to fully automatic to non-law enforcement Chicago residents."
In moving to dismiss, Glock said no portion of the city's lawsuit should be allowed to move forward, as it violates federal law designed to prevent gunmakers from being sued into insolvency by activists and trial lawyers seeking to hold them accountable for the violent criminal actions of others using guns.
Glock notes the federal law known as the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) includes exceptions for lawsuits brought by governments citing so-called "predicate exceptions" - specifically, claims against gunmakers for marketing or selling firearms "where such violation was the proximate cause of the alleged harm."
But in this instance, Glock said, the city's claims against the gunmaker for payment are based under the city's ordinance, which is neither a federal nor state law.
And, Glock noted, Chicago's claims rest entirely on assertions that Glock should be held liable for "the criminal activity of third parties." Such claims should not be allowed under the law, Glock said.
Glock, however, went further, seeking a court order striking down entirely the Illinois consumer fraud law that underpins the city's lawsuit.
Glock argued the revised state consumer fraud law should be declared unconstitutional because the law violates the so-called commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution, which gives the power to regulate interstate commerce solely to Congress, and violates the Second Amendment.
Allowing Illinois to use its consumer fraud law to dictate how guns must be designed would give Chicago and the state of Illinois outsized power to dictate market conditions for firearms not just within their own borders, but also in other states throughout the country, while potentially also greenlighting contradictory regulations in other states, Glock argued.
"Based on the City's reading of the (consumer fraud law), it gives Illinois courts the power to order Glock, Inc. to change the design of the pistols that it manufactures in Georgia, simply because those pistols could eventually be sold or possessed in Illinois and criminally modified to fire fully automatic through the installation of an auto sear," Glock wrote in its filing.
"... Indeed, if the (Illinois consumer fraud law) was not prohibited by the commerce clause, other states could pass similar laws requiring Glock, Inc. to change the designs of its pistols in still other ways to satisfy the conflicting desires of those states. Or other states could mandate that Glock, Inc. maintain the original design of its pistols, making compliance with all such laws impossible."
Glock further argued the state law directly violates the Second Amendment, as well, using questionable and politically driven claims of consumer fraud to indirectly ban the sale of certain otherwise-legal firearms, when an outright ban of such weapons would not constitutionally succeed.
Glock said such a legal maneuver runs afoul of the U.S. Supreme Court's holdings in the landmark Second Amendment cases known as District of Columbia v Heller and New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v Bruen.
In those decisions, the Supreme Court created tests for states and courts to use when evaluating if such restrictions are constitutional. Those tests require courts and lawmakers to evaluate if the weapons being banned are both dangerous and unusual, and if the restrictions are in keeping with U.S. history and tradition dating back to the ratification of the Second Amendment in 1791 and the Fourteenth Amendment in 1868.
Glock argued Chicago's attempted use of the Illinois consumer fraud law to enact a potential ban on the sale of Glock handguns doesn't hold up under such historical tradition tests.
"To survive a Second Amendment challenge, the City would have to demonstrate that there is a historical tradition of banning legal firearms simply because they could later be illegally modified by third parties into prohibited firearms," Glock wrote. "There is no historical tradition for such a ban and, as the City concedes, other semi-automatic pistols can also be illegally modified into fully automatic machineguns by the installation of an auto sear."
And Glock said the law also violates the Second Amendment by allowing Chicago and others to use lawsuits to assail lawful firearms manufacturers.
The Illinois consumer fraud law "also imposes restrictions that would undermine the Second Amendment by essentially imposing potential unlimited liability on members of the firearms industry," Glock said.
The law "uses vague terms related to 'unreasonable conduct' and 'reasonable controls,' that prevent Glock, Inc. and other firearms manufacturers from being able to structure their conduct to ensure that it complies with the law to avoid liability. There is no historical tradition of firearm regulations that could potentially support such a law."
"... Further, through the PLCAA, Congress specifically found that an attempt to use (nuisance laws) to impose liability on the firearms industry is 'based on theories without foundation in hundreds of years of the ... jurisprudence of the United States," Glock said.
Glock is represented in the action 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 the Renzulli Law Firm, of White Plains, New York.
In addition to attorneys from Everytown Law and the city's Department of Law, the city of Chicago is represented in the action by attorneys Mimi Liu, Elizabeth Paige Boggs and Fidelma Fitzpatrick, of the firm of Motley Rice, of Washington, D.C., and Providence, Rhode Island.