Judge allows lawsuit alleging Fleet Farm sold guns to straw buyers to proceed

Nick Ferraro, Pioneer Press
·3 min read

A federal judge has denied Fleet Farm’s motion to dismiss Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison’s lawsuit that accuses the retailer of selling guns to straw purchasers, including a man who bought one that was used in the deadly mass shooting at the Seventh Street Truck Park in St. Paul in 2021.

U.S. District Judge John Tunheim rejected Fleet Farm’s argument that the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act shields the Wisconsin-based retailer from responsibility.

The state “has plausibly alleged that Fleet Farm knew or should have known that it was selling firearms to straw purchasers,” Tunheim wrote Tuesday in his 37-page ruling.

Tunheim wrote that the state’s allegations against Fleet Farm in last year’s lawsuit were “clear examples of how illegally obtained firearms endanger the public in a way that legal firearms typically do not.”

Tunheim also found that it was appropriate for the lawsuit to proceed in federal court.

In a statement this week, Ellison said Tunheim’s decision is an “important step toward ensuring gun dealers are held accountable when they look the other way while selling to straw buyers. It also sends a clear message that federal law should not — and does not — shield gun dealers from liability if they ignore obvious red flags and sell to straw purchasers.”

Jon Austin, a Fleet Farm spokesperson, declined to comment Wednesday.

37 guns in 16 months

The state’s lawsuit, filed in October in Hennepin County District Court, alleges Fleet Farm repeatedly sold handguns to straw purchasers — people who illegally buy guns for others who cannot legally buy guns themselves, such as those convicted of felonies or with a record of committing domestic violence.

Straw buyers often falsely certify that they are purchasing guns for themselves. However, according to the lawsuit, they do raise red flags, such as many purchases in a single transaction or separate one-gun transactions in short periods of time, particularly of multiple firearms of similar make, model and caliber.

The lawsuit alleges Fleet Farm sold at least 37 firearms to straw purchasers Jerome Fletcher Horton Jr. and Sarah Jean Elwood over 16 months, often selling multiple guns either in single transactions or over short time periods. They’ve both been convicted in U.S. District Court of related crimes.

One of the guns the retailer sold to Horton was fired at Seventh Street Truck Park, a shooting at the West Seventh Street bar that killed 27-year-old Marquisha Wiley of South St. Paul and injured 14 others on Oct. 10, 2021.

ATF investigators traced the handgun found at the scene back to the Blaine Fleet Farm, where it was purchased about three months earlier by Horton, according to federal charges against him.

The lawsuit asserts claims against Fleet Farm for negligence, negligence per se, negligent entrustment, aiding and abetting and public nuisance. It seeks injunctive relief, including strengthened oversight of Fleet Farm’s operations and increased training to prevent sales to straw purchasers, as well as monetary relief, including disgorgement of the retailer’s profits from its alleged sales to straw buyers.

Ellison said the lawsuit now moves to the discovery phase “to uncover everything that Fleet Farm knew about these straw purchasers and what Fleet Farm did — if anything — to keep the public from being harmed by these purchases.”

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