Lawyers: Scheels not culpable for giving unloaded gun to man who shot himself in Eden Prairie store

It’s undisputed that Jordan Markie walked into the Scheels sporting goods store in Eden Prairie in 2022, that an employee handed the 19-year-old an unloaded handgun after he asked to see it and that Markie ran through the store, loaded it and fatally shot himself.

Whether or not Scheels and the employee who gave him the gun are to blame for that suicide is at the center of a wrongful death lawsuit filed last year on behalf of Markie’s mother, Sarah Van Bogart. The suit is backed by Everytown USA, one of the largest gun-control advocacy groups in the world.

In a virtual hearing Thursday in Hennepin County District Court, Judge Karen Janisch listened as both sides argued the merits of a defense motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

Heather Marx, the lawyer representing Scheels and its employee, William Ballantyne, said her clients cannot be held legally liable for what Markie did after he was handed an unloaded gun in the store.

“We gave him a metal brick to look at,” Marx said.

She argued against the primary claim of “negligent entrustment,” which says a supplier who knowingly gives a person an item to use “in a manner of reasonable risk” is subject to liability.

In filing the motion to dismiss, Marx called the lawsuit “a legally unsustainable exercise in blame-shifting.” On Thursday, she said a common sense view of the case would show there is no way that giving an unloaded handgun to someone can be viewed as an intent to have them use it.

“To use a firearm is to shoot it, discharge it, dispel ammunition,” Marx said. “There is no other way to use a handgun as a handgun than to fire it.”

She said the fact that Markie did just that was not a foreseeable result of Ballantyne’s actions or Scheels protocols.

“Mr. Markie took the handgun without authorization. Ran off with it. Loaded it with ammunition. That’s what we know,” Marx said. “That’s what we’ll know if we spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a year litigating this case.”

Attorney Adrienne Boyd, who represents Markie’s mother, argued that Scheels, as a federally licensed firearms dealer, is intimately aware of the fact that a gun is a weapon whether it is loaded or not.

“They said it’s like a brick or a paperweight, but a functioning gun is not an innocuous object,” Boyd said. “It’s reasonably foreseeable it will be used.”

Besides, Boyd said, Scheels has a responsibility to consider who is being handed the weapon.

She said Markie was acting confused, fidgeting and pulling on locked cases as if he might steal a gun. The attorney said he also asked to use a department store phone before asking to see the Taurus G2C 9-millimeter handgun.

She said Markie looked “well under 21,” which is the legal age to buy a handgun and there were no trigger locks or protective measures on the gun itself.

“His actions should have set off alarm bells,” Boyd said. “Because gun sellers like Scheels are trained to look for unusual behavior like this.”

The interaction between Ballantyne and Markie lasted 58 seconds.

A memo opposing the motion to dismiss noted that agreeing to Scheels’ position would lead to “absurd results” where a person could enter a firearms dealer, tell a staff member they wanted to shoot themselves, ask to see a gun, load it, shoot themselves and the store could claim they had no liability because they did not intend to have the customer discharge the weapon.

“If we think of their argument in different cases, if Scheels handed a hunting knife to a 3-year-old, liability would not turn on whether the knife was to be inspected,” Boyd argued. “It was ultimately foreseeable a 3-year-old could use a hunting knife to hurt themselves or someone else.”

Marx said in her motion to dismiss that many negligent entrustment cases center around parents who own a car and allow an unlicensed teenager to drive it, and an accident happens. She said when Ballantyne handed Markie an unloaded gun, it was like giving him “a car without keys or gas.”

Janisch prodded both sides for deeper explanations. Boyd pointed to several national cases involving unloaded weapons and negligent entrustment claims, but when Janisch asked if there was any Minnesota case law that supported her argument, Boyd said there was not.

The judge also asked both sides about the uncertainty around the ammunition Markie used. It was not alleged that he stole the bullets on the day that he shot himself, but the lawsuit said he had twice earlier stolen ammunition from the store.

Marx said the fact that he didn’t take the bullets on the day he was given the gun is more of a reason to dismiss the case. Boyd said the question of the culpability of the store in making ammunition so readily available is exactly the kind of question best left to a jury.

The hearing also offered a glance at the contradictory elements of Second Amendment rights for gun owners and gun dealers. Federal law states a person must be 21 to buy a handgun, but in Minnesota, Markie was legally able to own, possess, carry and fire one.

Those larger questions now settle around a popular, family friendly chain of sports equipment stores in the Midwest and two individuals who briefly interacted in Eden Prairie.

Janisch asked Scheels attorneys that if Markie was not of legal age to buy the handgun, “why is he being allowed to inspect it?”

Ballantyne is a certified inspector in the safe and proper use of firearms by the U.S. Concealed Carry Association, the National Rifle Association and the Minnesota Department of Natural Resources. He also teaches a Minnesota permit-to-carry certification class and a legal-use-of-force seminar at Scheels.

Founded in Minnesota in 1902, the company has 34 locations and more than 8,000 employees.

Markie’s mother said in a prepared statement with the lawsuit that her son was “kind, artistic and full of empathy and compassion for others.”

The lawsuit noted that firearms account for nearly one-half of suicides by young people in America and “a well-known problem that plagues this country and the firearms industry in particular.” It also noted that suicide accounts for 77% of all gun deaths in Minnesota.

Janisch has 90 days to rule on the motion to dismiss.

Minnesotans and others struggling with thoughts of suicide or other mental health crises can receive immediate help from the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline by calling or texting 988.