The liability springs from enabling a straw purchase the plaintiff alleges should have been obvious and therefore the sale should have been denied.
I imagine there is evidence (video, witnesses, etc.) that tend to indicate that the dealer knew or should have known he was facilitating a straw purchase.
Yes, you need a underlying cause of action...that's how law works.
The point is liability, gun manufactures and dealers can be liable for the products used in killings by third parties...even after lawful sales.
Take the case of the Sandy Hook victims that sued Remington. Initially their case was dismissed, because the lower court rules the manufacture is shielded from any liability under Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), but on appeal the Court overturned the ruling and declared in fact the victims families could sue under State law on separate causes of actions/theories. In that case they were suing Remington for violating the States Fair Trade Practices Act (on the factual basis that Remington marketed military style weapons to civilians). So you could just as easily shrug that of and say "well, liability there sprang from...", of course liability has to spring from somewhere.
So in the case of tech, if you wanted to sue the platform, you need an underlying cause of action...whether that may be defamation, or trademark infringement, or copyright infringement. Liability for the tech platforms would have to spring from somewhere just like any other cause of action.
I guess I was differentiating plain old negligence from the lawsuits that specifically go after immunity carve-outs in the PLCAA.
Interestingly, most of the reporting I was just reading suggests that the Sandy Hook case has been allowed to move forward because makers and sellers lose their immunity if they "knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product." This sounded like an overly broad immunity carve-out to me, but if true it seems reasonable that the case is still alive.
But of course, the reporting is not complete, it leaves out the second prong of this carve-out "and the violation was a proximate cause of the harm for which relief is sought"
I can't imagine the Sandy Hook plaintiffs proving or even providing evidence that supports the second prong. It will be interesting to see how this case unfolds. Hopefully it will not settle until all the appeals have been exhausted.
For Section 230, the immunity carve-outs are much clearer and limited. The tech industry must have better lobbyists than the gun industry.
Though if Biden is elected they may have problems:
In January 2020, former Vice President Joe Biden proposed revoking Section 230 completely. “The idea that it’s a tech company is that Section 230 should be revoked, immediately should be revoked, number one. For Zuckerberg and other platforms,” Biden said. “It should be revoked because it is not merely an internet company. It is propagating falsehoods they know to be false.” Biden never responded to follow-up questions about this statement.
>plain old negligence from the lawsuits that specifically go after immunity carve-outs in the PLCAA.
Negligence is a cause of action based on elements of duty and breach of said duty. So the question becomes what was the duty of the manufacture and how was said duty breach (the theory of the claim is very fact specific, there isn't really a "plain old negligence" theory). You are right about the proximate cause, that is another element of negligence claims that must be proven, meaning there must be a proximate cause between the breach of the duty and the damages...meaning there could be a duty and even a breach of said duty, but no liability because the breach was not the proximate cause of the damages (this really gets into the weeds of case law).
>The tech industry must have better lobbyists than the gun industry.
Its not about the quality of the lobbyists, NRA and big tech likely use the very same lobbyists, its about spend.
Because of the proliferation of mass shootings almost every knows about the NRA and pro gun rights groups, meanwhile almost no one knows about big tech lobbying, and they might be surprised to learn how much big tech outspends NRA/gun rights...big tech spent $500M in the last decade lobbying.
>last year, in a Wisconsin case, a jury found a Milwaukee gun store liable for selling a gun to a 21-year-old customer