A Manhattan appeals court today shot down orders that imposed outside monitoring on two out-of-state gun dealers accused of having “New Yorkers’ blood on their hands.”
The U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals said “several portions” of the 2009 injunctions against Mickalis Pawn Shop and Adventure Outdoors were “insufficiently specific or overbroad” and ordered “further proceedings” to make them comply with federal rules.
The decision noted that the Brooklyn federal court orders prohibit not only illegal “straw purchases” of firearms, “but other, unidentified types of sales practices as well.”
“An injunction is overbroad when it seeks to restrain the defendants from engaging in legal conduct, or from engaging in illegal conduct that was not fairly the subject of litigation,” Judge Robert Sack wrote for himself and Judge Richard Eaton.
The ruling said the injunctions were “also problematic” due to the wide powers granted a “special master” appointed to enforce their terms.
“Moreover, the injunctions provide that any dispute as to whether a violation has occurred, or any disagreements concerning decisions made by the special master, are to be resolved by the special master himself,” according to the decision, for which Judge Richard Wesley wrote a concurring opinion.
Mickalis Pawn Shop, based in Summerville, S.C., and Adventure Outdoors, in Smyrna, Ga., were among 15 gun sellers the city sued in 2006 after commissioning a series of secretly recorded sting operations.
Officials said more than 500 guns sold by the “rogue” dealers — whom Mayor Bloomberg called “the worst of the worst” — were recovered at local crime scenes, including the attempted murder of two cops in Queens and the fatal shooting of 3-year-old girl in Brooklyn.
The owner of Mickalis Pawn Shop, Larry Mickalis, was later charged by the feds with selling a rifle to an ex-con, and was sentenced to probation under terms of a plea bargain.
City Corporation Counsel Michael Cardozo said the ruling “sets the stage for monitoring sales from these two stores to ensure that their guns are sold lawfully.”
“There has been a dramatic reduction in the flow of illegal guns into the city from stores that have been monitored by the Special Master for the past three years, and the special master’s monitorship of these two additional shops will further prevent illegally trafficked guns from getting into the hands of criminals,” he said.