In another legal victory for Ross Feller Casey, a judge has ruled that the highly publicized civil case against Walmart alleging it negligently sold ammunition that was used in a 2015 shooting spree that killed three people will remain in Philadelphia Court.
The retail giant had sought to have the upcoming trial moved from Philadelphia to a court in the Lehigh Valley. On Tuesday, Philadelphia Common Pleas Court Judge John Milton Younge denied the request, siding with Matt Casey, a founding partner of Ross Feller Casey, in keeping the case in the city.
“Philadelphia jurors will have a unique perspective on the issue of a very large corporation seeking to evade responsibility for the horrible gun violence that took place and took the lives of three Pennsylvanians,” Casey, who is representing the families of the three murder victims, told The Legal Intelligencer newspaper. “We never believed that this case was anything less than a very, very substantial case, irrespective of where it is tried.”
The case, Ramos v. Walmart Stores, alleges that early on July 5, 2015, Robert Jourdain, then 20, was allowed to purchase a box of .38 caliber bullets from a Walmart in Lower Nazareth, Pennsylvania, despite being under 21 – the age required to buy the ammunition. He then gave the bullets to his cousin, Todd West, who used them in a shooting spree in Allentown and Easton, Pennsylvania, killing three people.
This ruling is the latest defeat for Walmart in the case. It follows rejections by the court to have the case dismissed outright, moved to federal court and delayed until after the criminal cases against the three people linked to the shootings are resolved.
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