Judging Freedom - OH sues over Train Derailment _ Biden & Gun Background Checks

Episode Date: March 14, 2023

Resolve to earn your degree in the new year in the Bay with WGU. WGU is an online accredited university that specializes in personalized learning. With courses available 24-7 and monthly start dates, you can earn your degree on your schedule. You may even be able to graduate sooner than you think by demonstrating mastery of the material you know. Make 2025 the year you focus on your future. Learn more at wgu.edu. Hi, everyone. Judge Andrew Napolitano here for Judging Freedom. Today is Tuesday, March 14, 2023. It's about 3.50 in the afternoon here on the east coast of the United States.

Here are two hot topics for you. The state of Ohio has filed a lawsuit against Norfolk and Southern Railroad over the February 3rd railroad derailment. We're going to show you some pictures of what this looked like from the sky. It's absolutely overwhelming, the damage that was done. If you could put that up, Gary, showing the fires and the smoke and the destruction to the environment. This was a catastrophe of monumental proportion, totally caused by the railroad. Now, they may have some other defendants that they're going to name in the lawsuit if they bought the railroad cars from someone who didn't properly design or manufacture the cars, or they're just going to settle this case. This is just the state of Ohio suing the railroad for the damage to the

property owned by the state of Ohio. This is not the lawsuit by individuals whose private property was damaged, whose homes were damaged, whose lungs and eyes and hands and feet and hair were damaged. So expect many, many lawsuits out of this. all the cases would be assigned to one judge and the judge attempts to resolve them all at once, but all the plaintiffs on one side of the courtroom and whatever defendants there are and their insurance carriers on the other side. And you try and see if there's a meeting of the minds on the amount of money that the defendants will pay to the plaintiffs. This is one of those lawsuits where all of the fault is on the part of the defendants, the railroad, and the people from whom they bought the cars or the people who maintain the cars, if there are people other than themselves. And their insurance carriers, I say

carriers because railroads usually have more than one insurance carrier. They have what's called reinsurance. That's an insurance policy to insure the original insurance company. So if they have a policy for $100 million per incident, for example, and this incident is worth a couple of billion, well, they have other insurance policies with $100 million deductible, and then they have insurance policies on top of that. Those second, third, fourth, fifth, however many there are, policies are what is called in the industry as reinsurance. As I said, this is the rare case where there's no fault whatsoever on the part of the plaintiffs. That's the state of Ohio that owned the damaged real estate and the waterways and the air and the fish in the waterways and private property owners whose bodies and whose properties were injured. It's not like an automobile accident at an intersection where

the defendant says, yeah, I went through the red light, but you went through a stop sign, so it's as much your fault as it is mine. There's no fault, no liability on the part of the plaintiffs. This is the way the system is supposed to work. I hope the case settles rather than it being tried. If it has to be tried, you're talking about tens of millions in legal fees and years and years, five or six or seven years before this reaches a jury. If you're talking about settlement, well, then the case could be resolved. All the cases could be resolved as soon as the end of this year, in the next 10 months, because the people who were injured, as I said, are totally innocent. They have insurance for this, the individual homeowners.

Once they accept a check from their homeowners, then they are giving up their right to sue the railroad. Then their homeowner's insurance carrier will sue the railroad. So it can get a little complicated. The best thing that can happen is for everybody to file those lawsuits right away, for all of them to be assigned to one judge and the one judge to resolve it as quickly as he can. Yesterday, President Biden demonstrated yet again that he doesn't understand the Supreme Court jurisprudence on the right to keep and bear arms. He was in California for a fundraiser for the Democratic Party. By the way, he said something that I think he meant to be in a soft and sweet way, but it came across terribly. This was a fundraiser at a private home, and he told the people there he plans to give the eulogy, I'm pausing for effect, at Jimmy Carter's funeral. Now, Jimmy Carter hasn't died,

but he said that when he last visited former President Carter, the former president asked President Biden to deliver his eulogy. It's a little odd to make a statement like that, and it's a little insensitive since Jimmy Carter, who is 98 years old, is very much still alive. I think the president didn't realize that it was a foot in the mouth, and he was trying to be soft and warm about his predecessor, Jimmy Carter. Carter, as you know, is receiving hospice care in his home. Okay, at the same fundraiser, the president signed an executive order making it a little bit more difficult to buy a gun. Well, how can he do that?

Okay, there are certain federal background checks mandated by federal law. Depends on what state you're in. In New Jersey, for example, the background check is more extensive than the state background check is more extensive than the federal background check. So it doesn't matter what he says to the feds. By going through the state background check, you've already gone through more than what the feds ask you to go through. But in many states where there is no state background check, the president wants to beef up the federal background check. His theory is make it more difficult for people to buy guns. Like I said, he doesn't understand the law because the Heller decision, Justice Scalia in 2008, and the Bruin decision, Justice

Thomas just last year, these two decisions together make it clear that the right to own and to carry a gun is a natural fundamental right in the same category of free speech and freedom of the press. So just as he couldn't make it more difficult to buy a book or to own a printer or to publish your own opinion, he can't under the law make it more difficult to own or buy a gun, which is why I think he's probably doing this so he can wave to the crowd and say, I'm doing my best to keep you safe. It's those nine black-robed, unaccounted jurists on the Supreme Court that are making things more difficult. No, Joe, it's the Constitution you don't understand, and it's the Supreme Court of the United States which says the Second Amendment

means what it says, which you refuse to acknowledge. The executive order he signed yesterday will go nowhere. It will help him pander to the crowds amongst the anti-gun people. But for those who believe that the Constitution means what it says, as the Supreme Court does, worry not. Morris, we get it at four o'clock in just a few minutes. Tony Schaefer on how dangerous is it for Russian fighter jets to have a midair collision with an American drone over the Black Sea just a few miles from Russia. Judge Napolitano. Oh, like and subscribe if you like this. Judge Napolitano. Oh, like and subscribe if you like this. Judge Napolitano for judging freedom.