By Jim Irvine

On June 17th, Judge Corrigan held a case management conference in Buckeye Firearm Foundation's case against the City of Cleveland. Plaintiffs were present in person, but none of the Defendants attended and instead allowed their attorneys to represent them. While the conference was scheduled as a case management conference, it quickly became apparent that the various pending motions would be argued for the judge.

By Jeff Knox

About a year ago, James LaMonte, founder and Chief Executive Officer of Coloseum software, was ready to release an innovative software package. He had a client in Idaho, Red's Trading Post, who wanted to install the software to reduce the number of minor errors on 4473's and other federally mandated records. But ATF rejected the variance request and asked for more information about the software. They issued conflicting opinions, and generally held up the process for several months before finally requesting a meeting with LaMonte.

If ATF wouldn't approve dealers to use the software, Coloseum's run would be a short one, so LaMonte agreed to the meeting. When they met, ATF assured LaMonte that they were not working with any other software developers and that any information he shared about his program would be held in the strictest confidence. They said they needed more detailed information before they could grant the requested waiver to Red's or any other dealer wishing to use Coloseum's products.

An ATF employee was assigned as liaison between ATF and Coloseum, studying Coloseum's software, asking lots of questions, and implying that open cooperation would lead to ATF support for Coloseum's products. After several weeks of this, ATF called another meeting with Coloseum to discuss the release of the software. At that meeting, LaMonte learned that ATF wasn't working with other companies, they were developing their own software for filling out 4473's and the ATF employee who had been studying Coloseum's software was the head of ATF's development team.