Opinion

City of Chicago v. Beretta U.S.A. Corp.

  • 213 Ill. 2d 351
  • 290 Ill. Dec. 525
  • 821 N.E.2d 1099
  • 2004 Ill. LEXIS 1665
Court
Illinois Supreme Court
Filed
Nov 18, 2004
Status
Published
Author
Freeman
On the bench
Garman, Freeman, McMorrow, Fitzgerald, Kilbride, Rarick
Cited by
242 cases
Authority
More cited than 9.5%

holding that the Moorman doctrine applies, even absent a contractual relationship, where “the damages sought by the plaintiffs are ‘solely economic damages’ in the sense that they represent costs incurred in the absence of harm to a plaintiff’s person or property”

How later courts described this case

  • holding that the Moorman doctrine applies, even absent a contractual relationship, where “the damages sought by the plaintiffs are ‘solely economic damages’ in the sense that they represent costs incurred in the absence of harm to a plaintiff’s person or property”
  • holding that the doctrine applies, even absent a contractual relationship, where “the damages sought by the plaintiffs are ‘solely economic damages’ in the sense that they represent costs incurred in the absence of harm to a plaintiffs person or property”
  • concluding that there is no public right to be “free from unreasonable jeopardy to health, welfare, and safety, and from unreasonable threats of danger to person and property, caused by the presence of illegal weapons in the city of Chicago”
  • rejecting the city’s claim for public nuisance against gun manufacturers and expressing “reluctan[ce] to recognize a public right so broad and undefined that the presence of any potentially dangerous instrumentality in the community could be deemed to threaten it”

Written by the judges who cited it.

The opinion

JUSTICE FREEMAN, specially concurring:

For the reasons given in my special concurrence in Young v. Bryco Arms, 213 Ill. 2d 433, 456 (2004), I specially concur.

CHIEF JUSTICE McMORROW and JUSTICES FITZGERALD, KILBRIDE and RARICK join in this special concurrence.

This is a copy of a public record, reproduced as it was published. It is not legal advice, and it may not be the version a court would rely on. Check the official source before you cite it.

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