Dear Davidson’s Dealer,

As part of Davidson’s ‘Keeping You Informed’ service, we wanted you to
be aware of a recent Ruger response to ongoing lawsuits. While this
response, from Ruger’s Vice President and General Counsel, Stephen
Sanetti, was provided in response to the then pending municipal
litigation that has since canceled, we found the comments to still be
relevant. The comments are taken from a recent article that appeared in
the American Firearms Industry magazine.

“Some of them [city lawsuits] are alleging, and obviously incorrectly
we feel, that there should be more safety devices on firearms that
already exist, and that somehow more safety devices would prevent
criminals from using guns criminally. That’s an obvious fallacy.
The second kind of claims basically are negligence claims that we are
somehow negligent in the way firearms are sold and distributed in the
country. That theory was most recently tested in the only such court
case to come to trial, the Hamilton case in Brooklyn, NY. And I think,
as all of you know, this Company, Sturm, Ruger, was completely absolved
of any responsibility in that case, and the jury specifically found
that our sales and marketing practices are not negligent in any way and
are completely above board and appropriate.

Congress and the BATF mandate how guns are sold in this country, and
such issues are proper for the legislation, not in the courts. We have
a lot of things going for us in these cases. They seem to be agenda-
driven by the gun control people. It’s not like some of the other mass
tort cases where they’re looking at the industry as the source of a lot
of cash that they are trying to go after. The case law is uniformly in
our favor.

We have a large body of constituents, obviously, who feel very strong
about their right to own firearms and their belief that Ruger firearms
are quality firearms, well made and not defective in anyway. And
there’s the essential element that these cases, the incidents that form
the basis for these cases that the mayors are filing suit over, are
criminal acts. And the law is absolutely uniform, even in states where
these cases are pending, that you cannot have a manufacturer’s
liability for legitimately selling a non-defective product if it’s
subsequently misused by a criminal far beyond its control. These are
not new kinds of cases. This liability theory has been thrown out over
the last 15 years in every court it’s come up in.

It may interest you to know that within the year, we actually did get
sanctions against a plaintiff’s attorney in Michigan who brought two
cases involving criminal misuse of one of our products. The cases were
dismissed at the trial court level, and dismissed at the appellate
level. The Michigan Supreme Court basically asked us to file a motion
for sanctions against the plaintiff’s attorney for filing a frivolous
lawsuits, and we did. . . . we just got his check, which was
gratifying.”

This is provided to you as part of our commitment to keeping our
dealers informed.

Sincerely,

Bryan Tucker
CEO/President
www.davidsonsinc.com – Dealers only
www.galleryofguns.com – Consumer’s site-We’re sending customers to you!