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IL Supreme Court on Lawful Protection of Commerce Act
PDF here. Adames v. Sheahan. UPDATE: this is strange. The link stopped working. I had a perfectly ordinary pdf in another window, so to test it I hit reload ... and it went blank, too.
Basically, a correctional officer kept a Beretta at home. His son got the gun (apparently despite being locked away) and thought that removing the magazine leaves it unloaded. He pulled the trigger with a round chambered and killed a friend.
Next of kin sued the government and Beretta, the latter because the gun didn't have a magazine disconnect safety and the loaded chamber indicator supposedly wasn't enough (I suspect the argument was it didn't have something saying "loaded chamber"), and on failure to warn.
The Illinois Supreme Court holds that the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act applies, and bars the suit since the suit is based on criminal misuse (negligent manslaughter). Plaintiff's arguments that doesn't apply because the shooter was adjudicated delinquent rather than convicted, that the adjudication doesn't count because it's unpublished, etc. are rejected.
Comments
The pdf successfully downloaded for me at 2:12 pm Pacific daylight time.
Posted by: Critic at March 19, 2009 03:17 PM
The link works for me, too.
Posted by: Matt at March 19, 2009 03:26 PM
Interesting... Macintosh Preview app has almost completely blank pages, as if the font were 'white' except for a few phrases. Adobe Acrobat 8 sees it fine.
Posted by: John S at March 19, 2009 05:26 PM
The Il.gov websites get squirrely sometimes.
Posted by: Thirdpower at March 19, 2009 05:33 PM
Sounds like a training failure on the part of dear old Dad...remove magazine, rack slide, check chamber. Still treat as if loaded, don't point at anything you don't want to destroy, etc.
This reminds me, I heard in Germany they want to really nail the Dad of that crazy teen mass shooter for failing to keep *his* Beretta locked away as specified by German law. I'm guessing that father probably kept his Beretta in that condition as a home defense measure. His defense attorney should point to this case to ridicule "safe storage" laws, but the German authorities will probably slap a hefty fine and possible jail time on the poor, grieving father.
Posted by: JJR at March 20, 2009 07:34 AM