A Jefferson County jury awarded $104.2 million against a ghost-gun seller that never ran an age or background check, and neither Husky Armory nor its parent ever sent anyone to contest it.
On July 16, 2026, a Jefferson County jury in Louisville put a dollar figure on an empty chair: nobody from ghost-gun seller Husky Armory LLC or its parent, Up North Media LLC, sat at the defense table to answer for it. The jury awarded $104.2 million over a build kit the companies sold to an 18-year-old, an eligibility check Kentucky Public Radio reported the company never ran, along with a background check. Attorney Tad Thomas summed up the record in one line: "They didn't follow any of the rules that pertain to firearm sales." No one from either company was present to dispute him.
The trial did not decide who was liable. That question was already closed. A Jefferson Circuit judge entered a default judgment against Husky Armory and Up North Media last year, after both companies failed to respond to the lawsuit at all. July 16 was a damages trial only, a jury deciding what silence costs when the silence belongs to a gun dealer. It answered with $4.2 million in economic damages and $100 million in punitive damages.
The mechanism behind that number was procedural before it was moral. Henry Willis, the buyer, was legally barred from owning a firearm at all: Kentucky Public Radio reported he carried a domestic violence conviction, a federal disqualifier that applies regardless of age, on top of being 18. Willis bought what's described as an "80% build kit," an unfinished-receiver category Kentucky Public Radio's reporting ties to the ATF's 2022 frame-and-receiver rule on background-check and serialization requirements. Husky Armory's silence left those allegations undisputed on the record, because no one remained in the case to dispute them. Willis died by suicide in 2023, days after assembling the kit, according to the same reporting.
There was also a statute in play, and it cut against Husky Armory rather than for it. The Kentucky General Assembly passed a law this year narrowing gun sellers' civil liability for crimes committed with their products. It looked, on its face, like cover for exactly this kind of case. Thomas closed that door in one sentence: the new statute "does not apply to cases involving illegal sales of ghost guns because the new law only protects lawful sales." In Thomas's telling, a liability shield built for lawful sellers did nothing for a company that never checked whether its sale was lawful in the first place.
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Laura Herp, his mother, brought the case with Everytown Law and Thomas Law Offices standing beside her. Her own words carried more weight than any brief: "Companies like Husky Armory thrive off selling to folks who shouldn't have access to firearms, and they didn't care who Henry was." Husky Armory and Up North Media never filed an answer, never sent counsel, and never contested a dollar of the $104.2 million a jury eventually attached to their names. The silence was the defense, and it lost.
Kentucky Public Radio called the result the largest jury award against a gun dealer in U.S. history. That ranking exists because two named companies chose absence over argument, leaving a jury to set the price alone. Everytown Law is not treating Louisville as an isolated result. The firm has already filed similar suits over ghost-gun kits in Virginia, where prosecutors say a teenager used one to kill two teens, and in Michigan, where the firm's complaint says a teen accidentally fired one and wounded another. Each filing runs the same theory Thomas argued in Jefferson County: a seller that skips age and background checks owns what happens next, whether or not it shows up to say otherwise. Kentucky's verdict now gives that theory an actual number to point to.
None of that guarantees Herp ever collects. Nothing in the record reviewed here shows whether Husky Armory or Up North Media carries insurance, or holds assets anywhere near $104.2 million. A defendant that would not answer a complaint is not obviously a defendant that will write a check. The fight now shifts from the jury box to whatever Up North Media actually owns.
Companies like Husky Armory thrive off selling to folks who shouldn't have access to firearms, and they didn't care who Henry was.
Husky Armory's post-judgment options include paying a judgment it never contested, or forcing Herp's lawyers into a collection fight against an LLC that may hold nothing worth taking. Everytown Law, meanwhile, can carry Louisville's number into whichever ghost-gun docket comes next, the same line from Tad Thomas attached to a new defendant. The company chose silence once. The next choice will not be optional.
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