Yahoo, NBC, CBS, the Wall Street Journal, and other news outlets have reported on Ilene Steur suing Georgia gunmaker Glock and its parent company based on Austria. Steur was on her way to work when she was shot in the April 12 attack in which a gunman fired dozens of bullets aboard a busy subway train. Frank James is charged with committing the attack on Steur, among other victims. James is alleged to have used a 9mm Glock handgun in the shooting. Last month, James pleaded not guilty to terrorism and weapons charges.

Fortuitously for Steur, New York state law relating to the liability of a firearms manufacturer is written in sufficiently vague language for establishing liability of a manufacturer that the scope of the language can encompass almost any act someone does not like. The nbcnews.com article alleges that the state law allows people to hold gun makers liable for damages if the firearm manufacturer creates a “public nuisance,” whatever that is. One of Steur’s claims is based on the allegation that Glock fueled a ‘public nuisance’ in New York and thereby endangered public health and safety.

Part of Steur’s legal claim is alleging Glock employed marketing characteristics of its products that would appeal to “purchasers with criminal intent.” In the lawsuit, Steur and her lawyers accuse Glock of marketing its products in ways that emphasize “firearm characteristics such as their high capacity and ease of concealment, that appeal to prospective purchasers with criminal intent.” The allegation is aggressive.

The lawsuit further accuses Glock of “purposely supplying more firearms than the legitimate market could bear in order to induce sales in the secondary market,” as well as of failing to train dealers to avoid illegal transactions, and refusing to shut down contracts with distributors who have sold to dealers “with disproportionately high volumes of guns traced to crime scenes.”

As a result, it says, Glock has “endangered the public health and safety” of New York residents by marketing, distributing, promoting and selling firearms “with reckless disregard for human life and for the peace, tranquility and economic well-being of the public.” Rubenstein said “She (Steur) sustained horrific physical injuries, as well as psychological injuries which she is under treatment for now. Her life will never be the same.”

Steur’s attorney Sanford Rubenstein said: “We’ll have to prove that the marketing efforts of Glock resulted in the creation of a public nuisance which puts guns in the hands of the wrong people.” The lawsuit puts New York general business law 898 to the test for the first time. Enacted in 2021, and facing legal challenges of its own, it prohibits the gun industry from endangering “the safety or health of the public through the sale, manufacturing, importing or marketing of a qualified product.”

According to the commentary in the article, the behavior, the criminal history, the mental state, the malice of the shooter, play no role in determining the liability of the gun manufacturer. They are not issues on a checklist that must be proven to hold a manufacturer responsible, opined attorney Rachel Demarest Gold, who is not affiliated with the case.

The lawsuit comes after gun industry leaders unsuccessfully challenged a 2021 New York law allowing victims of gun violence to sue gun manufacturers and dealers over their injuries. A federal district judge upheld the law last week, rejecting gun manufacturers’ claims that the legislation was unconstitutional.

The decision was handed down just a day after the deadly school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 children and two teachers dead. The massacre at Robb Elementary School has prompted widespread calls for strengthened gun control measures.

President Joe Biden on Monday pushed for tougher gun control measures, including a ban on assault weapons. “Remember, the Constitution, the Second Amendment was never absolute,” he told reporters outside the White House. “You couldn’t buy a cannon when the Second Amendment was passed. You couldn’t go out and purchase a lot of weaponry.

Marketing tactics were the basis of the lawsuit Sandy Hook families filed against gun maker Remington Arms. In February, the insurance companies for the gunmaker settled for a record $73 million. The validity of the Connecticut gun law upon which the litigation was based was not tested.