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Friday January 14, 2005

Families of JCC shooting victims can pursue case against gun industry

by tom tugend
jta

los angeles | Three families whose children were shot in the 1999 attack on a Jewish community center can pursue their lawsuit against the companies that made the weapons used in the shooting spree.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Jan. 10 let stand a ruling by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals that the suit could go to trial, and declined to hear an appeal for dismissal by two gun manufacturers and two distributors. Three teenagers, one adult and three children were wounded in the attack.

The lead plaintiff in the suit is the mother of Joseph Ileto, a Filipino American postal carrier, who was killed by Buford Furrow the same day in a separate attack.

Last May in San Francisco, the full 26-member appeals court, in a split decision, confirmed that the case could be tried.

At the time, Donna Finkelstein, whose daughter Mindy, then 16, suffered two gunshot wounds to her leg, told reporters, “I am so elated that we are finally moving forward.”

Similar sentiments were expressed by Alan Stepakoff and Loren Lieb, whose son Joshua Stepakoff, then 6, also was shot in the leg.

Eleanor and Charles Kadish also are participating in the suit. Their son Benjamin, then 5, was the most seriously injured, with gunshots to his stomach and legs.

The large cache of weapons found in Furrow’s car included an Austrian-made Glock 9-millimeter handgun and a 9-millimeter rifle, made by China NorthIndustries. Both manufacturers are defendants in the suit, along with RSR Management Corp. and RSR Wholesale Guns Seattle Inc.

Ileto’s mother, Lillian, and families of the survivors contend that these companies should be held liable under California law because they knowingly facilitated and participated in an underground illegal gun market, according to the complaint.

In filing the original suit more than four years ago, attorney Joshua Horwitz of the Educational Fund to Stop Gun Violence said that Furrow, a convicted felon with a history of mental instability, should not have been allowed to amass an arsenal of assault-style weapons.

“It is not enough to let guns go out of your factory door and say, ‘Sorry, we don’t know where they’re headed,’ ‘‘ Horwitz said.

The case now will return to the U.S. district court in Los Angeles for trial.

Congressional legislation that would have barred lawsuits targeting the gun industry failed last spring.

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