>in a Wisconsin case, a jury found a Milwaukee gun store liable for selling a gun to a 21-year-old customer...The gun was later used by an 18-year-old to shoot and critically wound two police officers, who were awarded damages by the jury.
Jury verdict (legal liability) against the seller of the gun which was used in a murder by someone other than the person they sold it to.
FYI: Walmart doesn't settle for cost or PR, they settle because of liability.
>Jury verdict (legal liability) against the seller of the gun
A jury verdict in a different case with different particulars doesn't immediately imply that walmart is guilty. The particulars of both cases matter. Being sued and settling does NOT imply legal liability, and someone else winning a different case is also not legal liability for walmart.
>Jury verdict (legal liability) against the seller of the gun which was used in a murder by someone other than the person they sold it to.
Case particulars matter.
>FYI: Walmart doesn't settle for cost or PR, they settle because of liability.
This is just not true. Walmart does things for PR all the time, including settle lawsuits they know will make them look bad.
The liability in these cases was related to alleged negligence related to facilitating straw purchases. And, in the PA case, possibly selling bullets to an underage buyer.
As mentioned before that's how law works. Before the erosion of the federal law protecting manufacturers and sellers of firearms, cases with the very same set of fact would have been dismissed, because there was a law shielding them from liability.
The parties have to be liable for something...and the same would be true with tech companies if their current federal protections were removed, they would have to be liable for some valid legal claims such as negligence, defamation, copyright infringement, trademark infringement.
The point is removing the federal shield the multi-billion dollar companies lobbied for to protect themselves from lawsuits, so when their is an otherwise lawful claim for which they are liable they can be sued.
>in a Wisconsin case, a jury found a Milwaukee gun store liable for selling a gun to a 21-year-old customer...The gun was later used by an 18-year-old to shoot and critically wound two police officers, who were awarded damages by the jury.
Jury verdict (legal liability) against the seller of the gun which was used in a murder by someone other than the person they sold it to.
FYI: Walmart doesn't settle for cost or PR, they settle because of liability.