by Vernal Coleman
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This year, Republicans in Indiana’s government passed a bill intended as the last blow to a long-running complaint against gun makers that seeks to hold them accountable for nearby illegal weapons sales.
The lawmakers also included language that made the bill retrospective to make sure that it may apply to the Gary lawsuit, which was filed nearly a quarter centuries ago.
On Monday, that efforts failed.
Judge John Sedia of the Indiana Superior Court ruled that while the law prohibiting cities from bringing legal action against the weapon industry is legal, applying it posthumously may “violate years of entrenched rights and constitutional guarantees.” For American gun manufacturers, it was a rare defeat in court.
Gary’s situation is the final in a line of civil lawsuits that have brought similar allegations against the gun industry. The new Indiana laws, which limited the attorney general’s jurisdiction to the state, was the basis for the lawsuit’s dismissal.
The president’s donors made no secret that the Gary event was the president’s goal. It included vocabulary to make it voluntary to Aug. 27, 1999 — three weeks before the town filed its complaint. But that choice appears to have doomed the company’s issue.
In a hearing before Sedia last year, the defendants, which include Glock, Smith & Wesson, and several other of the world’s largest weapons manufacturers, asserted in a hearing that the town no longer has the power to file its allegations that gunmakers have failed to combat the rise in illegal gun sales in and around Gary.
Philip Bangle, arguing for Gary, countered that, in practical terms, the invoice was” special” — especially aiming at Gary’s fit— and not allowed under the state law.
Bangle, an attorney from the Brady center, a nonprofit centered on gun violence prevention, told the judge that similar suits from other towns were not an issue. ” There’s none being contemplated, there’s none being threatened, and frankly, looking at what Gary has had to endure these last 25 years, I doubt that any of these bodies would want to”, he added.
Sedia cited a 2003 Indiana Supreme Court ruling, which states that if a state law violates constitutionally protected rights, as an example.
On Thursday, Judge John Sedia begins the proceedings for the Gary hearing. ( Taylor Glascock for ProPublica )
The General Assembly can bar cities from bringing lawsuits against gun manufacturers, but it cannot end this lawsuit, Sedia wrote. ” To avoid manifest injustice, the substance of this lawsuit must be taken to its conclusion”.
An appeal is being filed, according to a gunmaker’s representative. ” Respectfully, the Superior Court got it wrong”, said Lawrence Keane, senior vice president of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a trade association representing several of the defendant gunmakers. The defendants will immediately file an appeal to the appellate court to correct this omission.
Jody Madeira, a law professor at Indiana University and critic of legislators ‘ efforts to kill the lawsuit, was thrilled by the judge’s ruling. The main takeaway is clear, she said: State lawmakers” cannot use legislative hoodwinking” to disrupt the lawsuit and Gary will get its day in court.
The Brady Center and Gary officials did not respond right away.
The ruling foretastes the most recent attempt by the gun industry and its allies to stifle the case. The suit, which was one of several that year against the nation’s most successful gunmakers, was filed in 1999.
The gun industry gathered political influence to lobby federal lawmakers in response to the threat posed by the flood of lawsuits. They backed strong enough federal legislation to protect the sector from legal action. Once passed, the suits fell one by one. All except Gary’s.
The case marked a significant milestone that previous similar lawsuits did not. As the year began, the discovery phase was about to close, and the two parties would continue to exchange thousands of records, giving plaintiffs a window into the decisions and practices of gun manufacturers. When or if that process will resume is unknown.
