Free Republic

A federal appeals court threw out New York City’s longstanding lawsuit against the gun industry on Wednesday, ruling that a relatively new federal law protects gun makers against such suits. The appellate ruling killed perhaps the boldest avenue by which the city has sought to stem the flow of illegal guns into New York: a claim that gun makers and distributors have knowingly flooded illicit, underground markets with their weapons. The city’s suit, filed in 2000, was upheld in December 2005 by Judge Jack B. Weinstein of Federal District Court in Brooklyn. Judge Weinstein allowed it to move forward, despite...

Now 86, Judge Weinstein is in his 40th year on the United States District Court in Brooklyn, where his ability to turn out decisions that only a plaintiff could love seems to increase with each passing year. He once gave the green light for a once-and-for-all lawsuit that would include every American man and woman who ever smoked a cigarette. And he has also done his best to allow victims of shooting crimes to sue gun makers for negligent marketing. It turns out that there is quite a story, which we played on yesterday's front page, about why this judge...

A federal judge in New York today gave class-action status to a lawsuit that poses a major new threat to the tobacco industry by asserting that tobacco companies purposely misled consumers by marketing “light” cigarettes as a safer alternative to regular cigarettes. The ruling opens the door for millions, if not tens of millions, of Americans to join the lawsuit as plaintiffs. In his ruling, Judge Jack Weinstein of the Eastern District of New York, essentially said that any United States resident who has ever purchased a cigarette labeled “light” is part of the class represented in the suit. In...