THE FIGHT AGAINST HANDGUNS

Dallas attorney Windle Turley is out to ban handguns, and he makes no bones about it. But with the instincts of a first-rate guerrilla fighter, he’s picked his own ground -civil courts -and taken on a huge enemy -the gun lobby -from a vulnerable blind spot.

“We’re filing suit under product liability law,” says Turley, who heads his own law firm with 12 lawyers and approximately 75 support personnel.

“This is part of a project that our board of directors approved about 18 months ago. We’re suing in several states for relief in a variety of circumstances -death in a holdup, death in a domestic quarrel, suicide, accidental discharge.”

Turley’s argument, according to lawyers who have read it, is so simple that it just might work. Basically, Turley says that guns are a product like any other and as such, manufacturers are liable for damages even in cases of intentional misuse.

“There are about 50 million handguns in the country now and there will be a projected 100 million by the year 2000,” Turley says. “They account for about 22,000 deaths annually; and unlike household appliances or automobiles, handguns are a whole separate class of products in that manufacturers so far have not been liable for injuries.”

The first of his suits under the handgun project – Patterson vs. Rohm et al -comes up for trial in Dallas Federal Court this month. In the suit, Mrs. Jett Patterson seeks damages from Rohm, a German manufacturer, and the American distributor of the .38-caliber revolver that killed her 19-year-old son in a 1980 7-Eleven robbery.

If Turley prevails in the Patterson suit -and similar suits in Louisiana, Florida, Massachusetts, Connecticut and California -the immediate effect would be to force everyone from the retailer to the designer to take on a heavy load of liability insurance.

“1 doubt that even Lloyd’s of London would write insurance for a product this dangerous,” Turley says. “And even if they did, the margin of profit is so low the cost of insurance would eat it up or would price handguns out of the market.”

Turley’s plan is to make trouble for everyone involved. In another Texas suit -Clancy vs. Zale Corp. et al – Turley proposes to haul into court not only the manufacturers and distributors of a Saturday Night Special that left young David Clancy crippled for life, but also the manufacturers of all the component parts of the revolver, the retail outlet that sold the piece, the management firm that owned the shopping center and, ultimately, Zale Corp., which owns the management company.

Since Turley started his project, other lawyers around the country have filed suits of their own. Turley has gone one step further: In May, he videotaped a lecture to the SMU law school outlining the argument to use in a handgun liability suit. That tape is making the rounds of other law schools, multiplying the threat to the weapons trade.

And the gun lobby appears to be taking the threat very seriously. A respected products liability specialist, Turley is the lawyer who got the DC-10 airliner fleet grounded for modifications when the Federal Aviation Administration failed to do so after the 1979 Chicago crash.

Last year, the National Rifle Association’s “Reports from Washington” quoted William S. Kirk-general manager for R.G. Industries, a defendant in the Patterson case – as saying: “The suit – if by some weird quirk he would win – would be detrimental to every gun manufacturer in the country.”

To which Turley responds: “I certainly hope so.”