## Facts

- The NAACP sued major handgun manufacturers, importers, and distributors, including AcuSport, Inc., in federal court under diversity jurisdiction.
- The complaint sought injunctive relief under New York public nuisance law to change defendants’ handgun marketing and distribution practices.
- The NAACP alleged defendants’ sales and distribution practices foreseeably supplied an illegal secondary market for handguns in New York, increasing gun violence and related harms affecting the public and NAACP members.
- The case proceeded to a multi-week bench trial with extensive expert testimony and statistical and trace-data evidence concerning diversion of guns from lawful commerce to criminal use.
- The court found evidence that a relatively small set of dealers disproportionately supplied crime guns and that defendants could identify and better supervise high-risk channels through feasible measures (e.g., more selective dealers and monitoring practices).

## Issues

1. Whether defendants’ handgun marketing and distribution practices, by foreseeably facilitating diversion into illegal markets and increasing gun violence, constitute an actionable public nuisance under New York law.
2. Whether the NAACP had standing to bring a public nuisance action, including whether it or its members suffered a “special injury” different in kind from the public at large sufficient to seek injunctive abatement.

## Decision

- The court found that defendants’ distribution and marketing practices could amount to an unreasonable interference with public safety and thus a public nuisance under New York law.
- The court nonetheless entered judgment for defendants and denied injunctive relief.
- The court held the NAACP lacked standing because it did not show the “special injury” required for a private plaintiff to sue to abate a public nuisance in New York.
- The court concluded the alleged harms to NAACP members and communities were broadly shared public harms, and the NAACP’s asserted organizational resource diversion did not satisfy the special-injury requirement.

## Legal Principles

- Under New York law, a public nuisance is an unreasonable interference with a right common to the general public, including significant interference with public health or safety.
- A private plaintiff seeking to sue over a public nuisance must show a “special injury”: harm different in kind, not merely degree, from that suffered by the public at large.
- Organizational and associational standing principles require a concrete injury to the organization itself or member-specific standing; generalized community harms typically do not qualify as the required special injury in a public nuisance action.
- Even where a court finds conduct contributes to a public nuisance, abatement through injunction may be unavailable to a private party absent special injury; enforcement may be left to governmental actors with authority to vindicate public rights.

## Conclusion

The court determined that handgun distribution practices contributing to illegal gun markets could constitute a public nuisance, but it denied injunctive relief and entered judgment for defendants because the NAACP failed to demonstrate the special, distinct injury New York requires for a private organization to sue to abate a public nuisance.


Nat’l Ass’n for the Advancement of Colored People v. AcuSport, Inc., 271 F. Supp. 2d 435 (E.D.N.Y. 2003)