## Facts

- The National Rifle Association of America, Inc. (NRA) operated a Washington, D.C. headquarters with a main building (including a firing range) and a separate annex used for clerical offices; passageways between them were locked after hours.
- Robert W. Lowe, an NRA employee working in the annex, owned a .22 caliber target pistol and ammunition and used the pistol at the range in the main building.
- On November 23, 1979, Lowe left the pistol and ammunition in his annex office, locking them in a closet and leaving the closet key hidden in his desk.
- That night, burglars broke into the annex, found the key, and stole the pistol and ammunition.
- Four days later, one burglar and an accomplice used the stolen pistol during a robbery of Orlando Gonzalez‑Angel; the accomplice shot and killed Gonzalez‑Angel when he resisted.
- The estate’s administrator sued Lowe and the NRA under District of Columbia wrongful death and survival statutes, alleging negligence in firearm storage and premises security.
- At trial, the jury found Lowe not liable but found the NRA liable; the district court entered judgment notwithstanding the verdict (JNOV) for the NRA and rejected the estate’s request for a jury instruction treating a Firearms Act violation as negligence per se or evidence of negligence.

## Issues

1. Whether Lowe’s storage of the pistol and ammunition violated the District of Columbia Firearms Control Regulation Act so as to warrant a negligence-per-se (or evidence-of-negligence) jury instruction.
2. Whether the NRA owed a duty to protect the public from later criminal misuse of a gun stolen from its premises and, if so, whether the NRA’s conduct was a proximate cause of the killing despite intervening crimes.

## Decision

- The D.C. Circuit affirmed the judgment for both defendants.
- The court upheld the refusal to instruct the jury on negligence per se/evidence of negligence based on the Firearms Act because no statutory violation was shown and the statute did not clearly support the asserted civil-liability theory.
- The court affirmed JNOV for the NRA, holding the NRA owed no duty to Gonzalez‑Angel under these circumstances and that intervening criminal acts severed proximate causation.

## Legal Principles

- A negligence-per-se instruction based on a statute requires a demonstrated statutory violation and a statutory purpose consistent with treating the statute as a tort standard for the type of harm and class of persons involved.
- Premises owners are generally not liable for injuries caused by independent criminal acts of third parties absent a special relationship or sufficiently specific foreseeability of the criminal conduct.
- Intentional intervening criminal acts may constitute superseding causes that defeat proximate cause when the resulting harm is not reasonably foreseeable from the defendant’s conduct.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed verdict and post-trial rulings for defendants, concluding that the Firearms Act did not support negligence per se against the gun owner on the facts presented and that the NRA had no duty to protect the decedent from an attenuated, unforeseeable sequence of criminal acts that functioned as a superseding cause.


Romero v. Nat’l Rifle Ass’n of Am., Inc., 749 F.2d 77 (D.C. Cir. 1984)