It was just announced that UPS and FedEx are being sued by the families of the victims who died in Uvalde. Yes, the shipping companies are being sued.
The goal is to make it as difficult to conduct business around firearms as possible. The claims are that these companies shipped “parts” to somebody that they should have known shouldn’t have these parts because they make scary guns scarier.
That is not the topic of today’s post. In trying to do research for the new case, I stumbled on a case from June 2023.
There was massive fanfare all through the media about how Daniel Defense, LLC, Oasis Outback, LLC and Firequest International, Inc were all being sued by some Uvalde families because an asshole did bad things with a product produced or sold by a third party.
It turns out that Daniel Defense had absolutely the best defense, they didn’t even bother to respond. Oasis Outback, the company that sold the firearm(?) to the asshole who did the shooting. Firequest also responded.
The gist? Both companies filed motions to dismiss for failure to state a claim. Hearings were held on December 1st, the court dismissed the suite on March 27th. Nine months of lawfare, taking money from people that did nothing wrong.
In one case, a thing which wasn’t a firearm was treated as if it was a firearm, and the seller should have predicted that an asshole was going to do a bad thing with that particular item.
Having lost there, they are no going back to the well, attempting to get UPS and FedEx to decide it is too risky to transport firearms or firearm accessories.
There are some reports that this is already affecting people.
Comments
11 responses to “Lawfare and the Media”
this again proves that firearms are the ONLY tool demonized by those who are afraid of firearms in Patriotic hands. does FEDUP ship opioid products?? I bet they do..
Why stop at UPS and FedEx? How about a suit against the manufacturers who sold UPS and FedEx the trucks they used to deliver the firearm used, and perhaps also the refinery which produced the diesel fuel used in those trucks…which should also go all the way back to the roughnecks who drilled for the oil that got refined into that diesel fuel, and probably include the company that made the oil drilling equipment as well.
I’m surprised they haven’t filed suit against the ob/gyn who delivered the baby who grew up to be the shooter. Surely he or she should have known what action supporting the birth would portend. Maybe even sue the grocery stores that provided the food the child grew up on.
But…..do not the parents of the slain children bear responsibility for living in a jurisdiction which has ineffective law enforcement? Shouldn’t those parents sue themselves?
We seem to have almost reached the “sue everyone for everything” point.
We seem to have almost reached the “sue everyone for everything” point.
.
I’d say we’re already there.
Boris, you are correct. You can’t underestimate that position.
We’re definitely there. Probably making it mandatory to pay legal fees if you bring a suit and lose would help. I’m sure there are other tort reforms that would help.
Common carriers stopped transporting firearms from private hands years ago. Now they will only transport for FFLs.
And be careless in package delivery. The stories you hear about drivers leaving packages containing firearms out in front of shops is true. Don’t ask how I know this.
Heh (to quote Curby). At least when that happened to one of mine, it didn’t rain for a couple of days. The delivery guys left it outside shop’s fence, at the far side of the parking lot where the fence turned the corner to run along the lot line. Not even by the gate nor mailbox. It took a couple of days to find it – the box blended in pretty well with the local ground cover in these parts.
It’s been a number of years, but I definitely have shipped a gun via UPS (to the manufacturer, for a recall). It was a bit hairy because it involved dropping it off at the UPS office in person, and for some reason it specifically had to be “2nd day air”, neither more nor less.
I still regret doing that, but that was because of all the unrequested changes NAA made, not the shipping. 🙁
This sue-everybody approach is not uncommon; some people will go after anyone with even the remotest connection to whatever incident is driving the lawsuit, so long as they have deep pockets. That certainly includes the likes of UPS and FedEx.
.
In this case … At least some of the parents are probably genuinely trying to “do something” about their children’s death, and I can’t really fault them for that mentality. I have a problem with whoever convinced them that this was a good way to go about it, however.
Go after anyone and everything except the people actually responsible, just like with sandy hook. Can’t wait for the uvalde report that says “while the police failed to act in a timely manner and all other systems and points of interventions failed, this should not be taken as evidence of responsibility for those overseeing those systems and the response. The gun did it.”
.
Guess what I’m paraphrasing….