A little good news in bad times: Brady Center wins lawsuit against a gun dealer

Maybe I’m desperate for some decent news suggesting “the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice.”

Or maybe I learn about this stuff because I read the Daily News, which reported on this case:

It’s the largest settlement since a 2005 federal law that shields gun manufacturers from most similar lawsuits.

Source: Missouri gun seller makes landmark $2 million settlement – NY Daily News

Notable sentence from the Daily News may get a lot of us excited:

Pawnshop attorney Kevin Jamison said the settlement could dissuade people from opening gun stores.

The Times also mentioned the case, although it used a mere cite from Associated Press. I  picked up the Times story only by searching after I read the Daily News article. Still, it ain’t nothin’:

The Latest on a wrongful death case settlement with a pawn shop that sold a gun to a mentally ill Missouri woman who used it to fatally shoot her father (all times local):

Source: The Latest: Missouri Gun Shop Settles in Liability Case – The New York Times

But the headline belongs primarily to the Brady Center, which filed the lawsuit and persevered through one dismissal:

ODESSA, Mo. –Attorneys representing Janet Delana of Lafayette County, MO, announced a $2.2 million settlement in their precedent-setting case against a Missouri gun dealer that, despite warning from Janet, sold a gun to her severely mentally ill daughter. The daughter then used the gun to shoot and kill Janet’s husband, Tex Delana.

Source: ANOTHER BRADY VICTORY: GUN DEALER SETTLES WRONGFUL DEATH LAWSUIT FOR $2.2 MILLION | Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence

Dare we all hope this case might be precedence for a tidal wave of such cases suing gun shops that ignore background checks on mentally ill people?

UPDATE 11/29/16. This news appeared in a National Law Journal abstract, which uses the word “landmark” in the headline. It isn’t that I doubted it had happened, but if it’s a legal case, I do like the NLJ to plant its substantial weight on the story. Especially when it uses the word “landmark.’ This means onward and onward.

Landmark Settlement Reached in Mo. Case Over Negligent Entrustment of Gun

Andrew Denney, The National Law Journal

  

A Missouri gun dealer has agreed to pay $2.2 million to settle a wrongful-death suit brought by the mother of a mentally ill woman who purchased a gun from the dealer and who was tried for using it to kill her father. The settlement is the largest since the 2005 enactment of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, a federal law that shields manufacturers and dealers from liability when their products were used in crimes, according to the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence.

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