General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: How Bernie Sanders Helped Derail a Promising Legal Fight Against Gun Violence [View all]DanTex
(20,709 posts)It's fine for you to disagree. You are on the side of ALEC and other pro-corporate organizations have been pushing to weaken civil liability suits across the board. Yours is a classic right-wing view, that corporations are victims. And you are welcome to it.
Being a progressive, naturally I disagree. But even your right-wing perspective on tort law doesn't justify PLCAA, because as I've been saying, it's a carve-out for a specific industry with powerful lobbyists. As far as I can tell, your justification for PLCAA is that you personally find the lawsuits frivolous, you don't trust the courts to decide. Obviously, that's not a justification that anyone who believes in equal justice under the law could possibly accept. It's not based on any standard except for your personal opinion, and the fact that gun manufacturers have a strong lobby. If you have some defensible justification for why industries with powerful lobbyist shouldn't have to be subject to the same laws as everyone else, I'd love to hear it. But so far, after many attempts, you have produced nothing.
It's both statutory and the judgement of the court. Courts interpret and apply statutes. Tort reform is a pretty big issue, so if you don't know much about it, it's probably a good idea to read up before jumping onto the bandwagon with ALEC and the Club for Growth. Try Google.
Not that I know of. Apparently, unlike the gun industry, those industries aren't behaving in ways that cause massive judicially rectifiable damages.
Again, this isn't a standard because it depends on your personal opinion of who is "being coerced" and who isn't. The whole point a code of laws is to have specific rules and procedures for determining things like this. If anyone who gets sued can just claim they are "being coerced" then the whole system falls apart.