Exactly. Wal-Mart understands in this litigation happy time that they will be sued for any actions taken by the person using any gun purchased there. If the family of a gun crime victim can trace the gun back to Wal-Mart, KA-CHING $$. Most lawyers wet themselves when they get a chance to sue Wal-Mart--the most sued company in the world.
Wal-Mart is simply doing what it must to avoid frivolous litigation.
Posted on Sun, Apr. 28, 2002
He who pulls the trigger bears the reponsibility
J.R. Labbe
Help wanted: Sporting goods clerk. No sales experience necessary; will train. Doctorate in psychology or psychiatry required.
If the plaintiffs in a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against the nation's largest retailer had prevailed last week in a Fort Worth courtroom, that's what employment ads for Wal-Mart might have looked like in the future.
The family of Chris Marshall, one of two attorneys killed in a July 1992 shooting rampage in the Tarrant County Courthouse, and survivor Judge Clyde Ashworth tried to pin civil responsibility on Wal-Mart for not training its sales clerks to recognize the visual and verbal traits of someone who might be mentally unbalanced.
In a $24 million civil suit, attorney Art Brender argued on behalf of the victims that the corporation didn't have "proper procedures" in place to help a sales clerk recognize George Lott as a potential threat.
Never mind that the federal laws requiring criminal record background checks before a handgun could be sold weren't enacted until two years after the shootings.
Discount the fact that Lott, when filling out the "yellow sheet" on May 2, 1992, for the purchase of the gun he would use so fatally 60 days later, did not reveal he had been indicted a month earlier in Illinois on an aggravated sexual assault charge - something that would have automatically disqualified the transaction.
Forget that neither the sales clerk nor anyone else wearing a Wal-Mart name tag pulled the trigger.
The sole party responsible for the death and destruction that occurred that horrible July day was arrested in 1992, tried and found guilty in 1993, and rightfully executed by the state of Texas in 1994.
And jurors apparently recognized that, even if the Marshall family and Ashworth don't. It took all of 30 minutes for jurors to decide that Wal-Mart was not culpable.
Related lawsuits, in which victims or their survivors have attempted to hold gun makers responsible for crimes committed with their products, also have failed. Courts across the country have realized that manufacturers of legal products aren't responsible for a purchaser's misuse or abuse of the merchandise.
The jury also must have recognized the impossibility of expecting a minimum-wage sales clerk - who may or may not have a high school diploma - to discern who is mentally unbalanced and who isn't. That's a challenge for professional men and women with an alphabet soup of degrees behind their names who spend hours observing an individual before making an assessment.
The attempt to place liability where it didn't belong was just one troubling aspect of the case. The other was that mental illness equals mentally unbalanced and therefore the potential for violence.
A number of studies have shown that people with mental illnesses are not more violent than the general population. If mental illness is one of several factors including a criminal record and a history of substance abuse, then the potential for violence increases, but studies show the violence is more likely to be directed inwardly, and not at others.
To stigmatize people with mental illness as a tragedy waiting to happen is unfair and inaccurate. It is exactly the kind of stereotype that keeps people with treatable depression, anxiety and other mental illnesses from seeking help.
Unfortunately, that's exactly what U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer and U.S. Rep. Carolyn McCarthy - Democrats from New York - have done in a bill they jointly sponsored that will require state mental health facilities to send the names of patients to the national background check system.
"Common sense says that someone who is mentally ill shouldn't be able to buy a gun," McCarthy said at the news conference.
Of course, one must consider the source when reading quotes about guns by the honorable representative from New York. Having your husband killed and your son wounded by a madman who shot up a commuter train will skew your perspective. Like Ashworth, McCarthy makes a great witness during victim impact testimony - but she isn't the level-headed, detached thinker needed to make national laws.
A horrible event took place in Fort Worth on July 1, 1992. The lives of the people directly involved and their families were forever changed. But the person responsible for that tragedy has already been held accountable - and he can never kill again.
Jill "J.R." Labbe is a Star-Telegram senior editorial writer. (817) 390-7599 jrlabbe@star-telegram.com