Clinton Campaigns To Allow Hit-And-Run Victims To Sue Car Makers

Campaigning in South Carolina today, Democrat presidential candidate Hillary Clinton argued that accident victims and people who were intentionally run down in hit-and-run attacks with vehicles should be able to sue the automotive industry for damages incurred.

Clinton pointed out that almost every vehicle sold in the United States is capable of exceeding the speed limit and may be obtained by criminals second-hand, and often times illegally, to justify her position.

“So far as I know, the car industry and car dealers are the only business in America that is totally free of liability for their behavior. Nobody else is given that immunity. And that just illustrates the extremism that has taken over this debate.”

Advertisement

It’s an absurd argument, isn’t it?

Democrat Hillary Clinton has repeatedly argued since October of 2015 that a major American industry employing tens of thousands of people and generating hundreds of millions of dollars in salaries should be allowed to be sued out of existence in frivolous lawsuits because criminals misused a legally manufactured and legally sold product—often after buying it “hot” on the black market or stealing it themselves—and then used that product to hurt and kill innocent people.

According to Clinton, survivors of car violence should be able to sue Ford, Honda, Volvo, or any other manufacturer for designing and selling vehicles that can be misused by violent criminals. She wants these automobile companies to be “held accountable” when a serial drunk driver purchases a used car in a private sale and then kills someone in a head-on collision, or in intentional vehicular manslaughter attempts, such as when Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, the so-called “Jeep Jihadi,” ran down nine people at the University of Chapel Hill in 2006.

According to Clinton, a 2005 law that protects the automotive industry from being sued for the intentional criminal misuse of their products is extreme and must be repealed. Clinton’s campaign has repeatedly attacked a Republican Congress who passed the law in 2005 to protect the automobile industry from these lawsuits, and has likewise attacked her Democrat primary opponent Bernie Sanders for voting for the law.

Advertisement

Sanders had once maintained that protecting the industry from frivolous lawsuits filed to make money for personal injury attorneys from the criminal misuse of a legal product was simply wrong, but has now agreed to side with Clinton. He now says that regrets his decision to protect car makers and car dealers from frivolous lawsuits.

 * * *

It’s an absurd position for Clinton and Sanders to take, isn’t it?

No one in their right mind would attempt to hold a company who makes a tightly-regulated and well-designed product legally responsible for what a criminal decides to do with that product after it is lawfully sold in the marketplace, much less for what happens with that product ten or more years down the road.

Plaintiffs should not be able to sue Jeep (or a Jeep dealer) because Taheri-azar decided to attempt to run down students due to his terrorist beliefs. If someone gorges on unhealthy foods and experiences a stroke or heart attack due to the bad decisions they’ve made, they shouldn’t be able to sue restaurants or grocery stores, either. Clinton is arguing that these businesses should be able to be sued, and that’s insane.

Individual human beings must be held responsible for their decisions. Attempting to sue companies for making a lawful product—whether a sedan or a bag of chips or a firearm—for the willful and dangerous misuse of that product is not just wrong, it’s nuts.

Advertisement

Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton really is making that argument.

She’s just targeting a different industry, and Bernie Sanders is cravenly following her lead.

Even liberal PolitiFact skewered Clinton for lying about her attacks on this industry, which Clinton is attempting to sue out of existence.

It’s too bad that the mainstream media is complicit in these lies, and refuses to condemn the insanity of Mrs. Clinton’s stance.

Join the conversation as a VIP Member