Judge Shopping in Firearm Lawsuits
Judge Jack Weinstein is getting some attention. Seems that plaintiffs like their chances in his Brooklyn courtroom when the defendants are tobacco or firearms manufacturers. From the New York Sun:
The latest interest in Judge Weinstein doesn’t stem from any of his Page 1-worthy rulings but the more arcane question of how some of his cases got assigned to the judge in the first place. At issue is how more than a dozen lawsuits brought against the tobacco industry — and several suits against firearm manufacturers — ended up before the judge.
By and large, these suits, about 20 in all, against the tobacco and firearm industries didn’t arrive on Judge Weinstein’s docket through a “spin of the wheel” — the random case assignment process by which suits are sent to judges. Instead, plaintiffs in the know have long used an administrative shortcut to maneuver lawsuits against the same set of defendants into the courtroom of their choice. Their choice is often Judge Weinstein.
In response, defense attorneys for the firearm and tobacco industries have alleged judge shopping and long tried to get their cases yanked from Judge Weinstein’s courtroom and reassigned, with mixed results. On Thursday, the issue will come again to a head when a lawyer who has long represented the firearm industry, John Renzulli, will ask Judge Weinstein to recuse himself from a high-profile gun suit. The case was brought by New York City against out-of-state gun dealers who have sold handguns later recovered at crime scenes in the city.
It isn’t the first time Mr. Renzulli has made this sort of motion — that was back in 1996. In the meantime, Judge Weinstein’s docket has drawn increasing scrutiny. There’s even a judge on the 2nd Circuit, Jose Cabranes, who makes a habit of quizzing lawyers about the matter when Judge Weinstein’s rulings come up on appeal. “Is there a rule or practice in the Eastern District of New York that Judge Weinstein is assigned to all mega-cases?” the Judge Cabranes asked several years ago. The comments came during oral arguments reviewing Judge Weinstein’s decision to try a case brought by Blue Cross and Blue Shield against the tobacco industry. The question has stuck with Judge Cabranes over the years. This September, he asked why the city’s lawyers had taken a suit against firearm manufacturers “across the Brooklyn Bridge” to where Judge Weinstein sits, when the court in Manhattan was nearer to the city’s law offices.
Weinstein is known to be virulently anti-gun. This story quotes one defender of Weinstein as having thrown out a suit by the NAACP against gun makers. Yes, but that was because of a technicality and at that time Weinstein said he would be “open to hearing more suits against the firearms industry.”
Back in May of 2006 (link no longer works) the NY Daily News gushed:
Sharp shootin’ Jack Weinstein, judge of the Eastern District, has used a silver bullet to single-handedly keep alive Mayor Bloomberg’s battle to get illegal guns off the street. The judge rightly ruled that the city can use federal data it already has against gunmakers and distributors who carelessly deliver their wares to unscrupulous dealers who, in turn, sell to criminals. Weinstein is the man in the white hat against the firearms black market.
It was the second time the judge rode to the rescue against gun-industry puppets in Congress. Which only shows how afraid the National Rifle Association and its lackeys are of a lawsuit that seeks to declare negligent dealers a public nuisance by using numbers pried from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
The first time, in December, Weinstein ruled that a new federal law limiting gun-industry liability does not apply to the city’s suit. That law, ludicrously dubbed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, was passed solely to grant amnesty to gunmakers and distributors who know their deadly products are funneled to criminals and sell them anyway. Weinstein was having none of it.
In December of 2005 the National Shooting Sports Foundation issued a press release (link no longer works but you can find the text here) about Judge Weinstein:
Dec 2, 2005 — A federal judge in New York City today ruled that the city may ignore federal law and proceed with its frivolous lawsuit against firearms companies.
Industry defendants had filed a motion to dismiss the suit after Congress passed the “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act” in October. While the new law was intended to protect firearms industry companies from lawsuits like New York’s, Eastern District Judge Jack B. Weinstein opted to deny the motion and side with the city.
“Judge Weinstein’s decision was not only predictable, but intellectually dishonest and blatantly biased, given his decade-long track record of aiming to derail the firearms industry,” said Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel for the National Shooting Sports Foundation (NSSF), the trade organization for the firearms industry.
“New York City’s lawsuit is precisely the type of suit the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was designed to prevent. During debate in each chamber of Congress, Sen. Larry Craig and Rep. Cliff Sterns — the sponsors of the bill — both referenced the city’s case as a quintessential example of a lawsuit the act would prevent,” Keane said.
The “Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act,” signed into law in October, was created to prevent lawsuits attempting to hold firearms industry companies liable for the actions of criminals who misuse the industry’s lawful products. The law prevents wrongful civil liability lawsuits against law-abiding companies.
So how do these cases wind up in Weinstein’s courtroom? Because plaintiffs’ lawyers want them there and all they have to do is claim that their case is “related” to one that the Judge has already heard. Getting back to the NY Sun article:
The first industry-wide suit against firearm manufacturers for negligent marketing to arrive before Judge Weinstein in 1995 had been marked down as related to two earlier cases, one from about 15 years earlier. One of cases claimed that the trigger pull on a shotgun had been too light. The other case was against manufacturers of the drug DES, which was once prescribed to prevent miscarriages, and involved a similar theory of market share liability as the firearm litigation. Lawyers for the firearm companies have long claimed that the lawyer who filed the suit had stretched the related case rule so that Judge Weinstein would get the case.
Since then, “the assignment of this entire chain of firearms cases to Your Honor can only be characterized as a poisonous tree,” Mr. Renzulli, the firearms lawyers, wrote this month to Judge Weinstein. “The misuse of the assignment process is wholly improper.” The related case rule is designed to prevent a whole slate of judges from reviewing the same evidence in a series of similar suits against the same defendants.
It will be interesting to see how this turns out. Will Weinstein recuse himself from Bloomberg’s suit. He hasn’t in the past. . . .
17 Responses to “Judge Shopping in Firearm Lawsuits”
on 03 Dec 2007 at 8:42 am # Letalis Maximus, Esq.
Nationally, the bench needs to pay some serious attention, and probably bring about judicial reform, to this “related case” abuse because Reversible Jack is not the only judge with whom it is being used.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 9:05 am # Voolfie
To borrow from a great American: Rope, Tree, Lawyer…some assembly required.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 9:48 am # MarkD
New York doesn’t have initiative, referendum or recall. The state is quite possibly the most authoritarian and least responsive to the needs of the citizens of any in the United States.
This is one more sorry example.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 10:02 am # Mr. Obvious
We need to reign in judges. Liberal Jewish judges like this guy have grabbed too much power in this country
on 03 Dec 2007 at 10:10 am # notalawyer
Lemme get this straight: You believe justice is blind?
That’s really a hoot, given the available evidence.
Justice is bought and sold by people with an axe to grind and the power to direct people’s lives as they see fit. Judges proclivities are well-known to the bar and this sort of shopping occurs with enough regularity that poor non-lawyer saps like me … just an ordinary American … have zero faith that judges are acting dispassionately.
The very last place you want to be without a bagman is in a courtroom.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 10:54 am # Scott
Mr. Obvious - I’m with you on overreaching liberal New York judges. But let’s leave Jews out of this. Some of the strongest pro-gun people I know are Jews, especially the ones who got out from behind the Iron Curtain. Let’s not forget Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership, whose website http://www.jpfo.org/ used to have detailed instructions for milling a Mauser-type rifle action in a home shop. Talk like that alienates valuable allies in this fight, and we need all the allies we can get.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 11:36 am # Rustmeister
No suprise, he was appointed by LBJ.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 12:34 pm # Dewage
It appears that in re Judge Weinstein, the ends justify the means. Et tu, Brute?
on 03 Dec 2007 at 12:58 pm # Steven Cohen Manseau
Mr. Obvious, with all due respect, 85% of my Jewish family is strongly pro-gun.
We, of all people, know what it’s like to be on the wrong end of the gun without recourse.
Please don’t alienate your friends, you will never know when you will need all the ones that you can muster.
on 03 Dec 2007 at 1:20 pm # ThomasD
Mr. Obvious is obviously an anti-gun Moby looking to tar anti-totalitarians as anti-semitic. His efforts are foolish and misplaced.
Dang, that’s alot of hyphens…
on 03 Dec 2007 at 3:05 pm # Rich
As Lenny Bruce said, in the Halls of Justice, the only justice is in the halls…
on 03 Dec 2007 at 6:38 pm # Letalis Maximus, Esq.
Um, Silberman is Jewish and I think pretty highly of his latest high profile decision. Maybe you’ve heard of it - the D.C. Handgun Ban Case, Parke/Heller.
on 04 Dec 2007 at 12:12 am # Sebastian
I wouldn’t worry too much about whether or not Judge Weinstein can be removed. There is no recall provision for federal judges, only impeachment, which isn’t likely. Appointments to the federal bench are for life. The guy is 86 years old, he’ll be worm food before too long.
on 04 Dec 2007 at 5:17 pm # Kurt "45superman" Hofmann
The guy is 86 years old, he’ll be worm food before too long.
Worms deserve better.
on 04 Dec 2007 at 6:39 pm # straightarrow
he won’t recuse himself. That would require integrity, which he has amply demonstrated to be in lack thereof.
on 08 Dec 2007 at 11:07 pm # Elmo C
Why does this happen? Why do the good people let this happen in the courts? Why do these rouge judges set and rule with bias? Why in this great country do the companys let these judges get away with this? It is beyond me to think that an American judge of the court would destroy or try to destroy a legal company, just because they don’t like the product. Who are the lawyers that thrive on injustice and a rouge judge? The harm they do is indescrible. I guess,they don’t care.
on 09 Dec 2007 at 10:16 am # Frankie B.
That stinken socialist/communist judge along with Chuck Shummer and Bloomberg should be rounded up by the good law abiding citizens of New York State and hanged. Then start on Californicate.