GUN LAWSUIT OUT OF AMMO BEFORE 1ST SHOT.

Byline: CHRIS WEINKOPF

WHEN he was still city attorney, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn swore that the lawsuit he launched against the nation's gun manufacturers was ``more about changing the way they do business than money.''

Three years later, his successor, Rocky Delgadillo, echoes the same theme, insisting that the litigation, filed in conjunction with San Francisco and several other California cities, ``isn't about the money,'' but forcing ``gun manufacturers to make the distribution of their products safer.''

Someone tell that to the good folks at Milberg Weiss Bershad Hynes & Lerach LLP.

The New York-based law firm, pre-eminent in the field of class-action ambulance-chasing, is litigating the case on the city's behalf for a relative pittance - a maximum of $100,000 a year for four years. That only covers basic costs, not lawyers' fees.

It's hard to imagine that Milberg Weiss's partners would be content with such a meager haul. When the firm represented shareholders in a class-action suit against Aetna Inc., its portion of the eventual settlement was worth more than $1,000 per work hour. And that's peanuts compared with its take in the settlement of California's lawsuit against the tobacco industry, which reportedly came to an hourly average of $4,904.

If the cities can wrest a settlement out of gun manufacturers, reform will surely not be the only concession. Milberg Weiss will almost certainly see to it that a hefty cash payout is part of the package, and it can expect to draw an 18 percent contingency.

But it's hard to know for sure how much Milberg Weiss stands to make because there's no contract between the firm and the city of Los Angeles.

According to a City Hall official familiar with the inner workings of the City Attorney's Office, Hahn never actually bothered to ink a deal with Milberg Weiss. For that matter, he never got around to paying the firm, or earmarking funds for its future payment, either. That didn't stop him, though, from boasting about the lawsuit during his campaign for mayor, or letting the firm conduct the litigation for more than two years under his watch.

Cleaning up the mess Hahn left behind, the official reports, has fallen onto the shoulders of Delgadillo, who expects to finally complete the contract in a month - three years into its four-year life-span. The official calls it ``the nightmare that is the back-story of gun litigation.''

Not that the front story is any less frightful.

The lawsuit's central claim is that gun manufacturers that sell firearms through legal, federally licensed dealers bear the blame for the actions of the criminals who obtain weapons illegally. Never mind that between manufacturer and criminal, there are at least three intermediaries - distributor, dealer and a legal purchaser. From there, a gun might pass through several legal owners before a criminal buys it illegally, or, as is often the case, steals it.

Imagine if the city tried to sue Toyota because a liquored-up carjacker crashed a Camry into a school bus. That's the logic of this case.

No wonder courts have tossed out similar lawsuits in New Orleans; Miami; Atlanta; Cincinnati; Chicago; Philadelphia; Bridgeport, Conn.; Gary, Ind.; and Camden County, N.J. To date, none of the recent municipal anti-gun cases has made it to trial, let alone delivered its plaintiff a favorable verdict or settlement. Last month, in the face of mounting legal bills and dim prospects of success, Boston officials pulled the plug on their suit altogether.

Yet despite being stuck with a loser of a legal mess, Delgadillo has no intention of following Boston's lead and dropping Hahn's case. The way he sees it, the city is already on the hook for $300,000 in payments to Milberg Weiss, so it has little more to lose financially. He also feels a ``moral obligation'' to the firm, which has been doing the grunt work for the last three years. And he thinks some good could come out of a trial. ``Whatever the odds are, they are worth taking for our kids,'' he says.

Like Hahn before him, Delgadillo hopes the suit will bring a de facto change in state gun law, without actually engaging the legislative process. It's a common practice, but one that clearly runs afoul the democratic ideal of elected legislators, not unaccountable judges and juries, making law.

Of course, enacting controversial legislation is even more challenging than pursuing bogus lawsuits. It's also not as lucrative for the lawyers, even those working without the benefit of a contract.

The city's crusade against firearms manufacturers deserves to fail, and, barring a serious miscarriage of justice, it will. But Delgadillo could spare us the needless litigation by dropping it now, rather than waiting for next year's scheduled trial.

Just because he inherited Hahn's nightmare doesn't mean he has to prolong it.