Are Gun Manufacturers Liable For Mass Shootings?

• Published date: 03 March 2021
• Subject Matter: Litigation, Mediation & Arbitration, Criminal Law, Class Actions, Crime
• Law Firm: Bennett Jones LLP
• Author: Mr Michael Eizenga, Michael C. Smith, Gannon Beaulne and Keshava Gita

An Ontario Superior Court judge has accepted, in a preliminary decision in Price v Smith & Wesson Corp, 2021 ONSC 1114, that gun manufacturers may have civil liability in Canada for losses caused by mass shootings when feasible safety measures could have prevented the harm but were not used.

The Danforth Shooting

In summer 2018, a mass shooting on Danforth Avenue in Toronto involving a stolen handgun claimed the lives of two people and injured many others. The stolen handgun was an M&P'40, designed and manufactured by the U.S. company Smith & Wesson Corp in 2005 and made available for sale in Canada in 2013. The M&P'40 is a semi-automatic pistol for military and police use and is not designed for hunting. It did not incorporate any so-called "smart gun" technology to thwart criminal acts by unauthorized users. Justice Paul Perell in his decision made reference to Canadian and U.S. statistics indicating that lost and stolen firearms pose a substantial threat to public safety and law enforcement.

Smart-gun technologies take many forms, including biometric technologies (such as finger-print or palm-print recognition), automated identification technologies (such as proximity tokens and magnetic rings), and internal or external locking devices. Such measures have existed since the 1970s. By the 1990s, many manufacturers were integrating these technologies into their firearms. Smith & Wesson itself filed at least seven relevant patent applications between 1998 and 2001. Authorized user technologies allow the weapon to fire only when activated by an authorized user and, accordingly, "reduce...