Out-of-State Gun Case Lawyer Defaults on Trial

The trial involving a Georgia gun shop that Mayor Bloomberg has accused of selling many guns that were subsequently trafficked into New York City has been postponed indefinitely.

The trial had been set to begin tomorrow at a U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, but a lawyer for the gun store, John Renzulli, decided to forfeit the case in order to be able to quickly appeal some preliminary rulings by the trial judge.

The gun store's unusual move came after the judge, Jack Weinstein of U.S. District Court in Brooklyn, ruled that he — and not a jury — would decide the case. That decision apparently discouraged Mr. Renzulli enough to default the case.

Mr. Renzulli, who has long accused Judge Weinstein of bias against the firearms industry, wrote in legal papers that his client would "not receive a fair trial" if the verdict was set by Judge Weinstein. The default, Mr. Renzulli said in an interview, was a procedural maneuver to rush the case up to an appellate court to seek an order requiring Judge Weinstein to dismiss the case or hold a trial by jury. He said the gun store, Adventure Outdoors, would continue to fight the city's lawsuit.

The city, however, counted the development as a win.

"This is an important victory for New Yorkers — as good as a win at trial — and a validation of our innovative efforts to hold gun dealers accountable for following federal law," Mr. Bloomberg said in a statement.

Adventure Outdoors is one of 27 out-of-state gun dealers to be sued by the city since 2006. The city describes each as a public nuisance because of the high number of guns that the city says it has traced back from crime scenes to the shops. The city does not have any evidence that any guns from Adventure Outdoors were ever used in the commission of a homicide in New York, according to court filings.

The vast majority of the shops had agreed to allow the city to pay a court-appointed monitor to oversee their business practices. Adventure Outdoors was set to be the first gun shop to challenge the lawsuits in court.

The shop's owner, Jay Wallace, has also filed a defamation suit against Mr. Bloomberg in court in Georgia.