Is the effort to kill a lawsuit against gunmakers a ‘Pandora’s box’? Holcomb holds the key

Legislation aimed at killing the city of Gary's pending lawsuit against some of the world's largest gun manufacturers is now headed to Gov. Eric Holcomb.

The Indiana House gave the measure final approval Tuesday, almost exclusively with the support of the Republican supermajority. Holcomb's office declined to comment on whether he plans to sign the controversial bill.

House Bill 1235 would ban cities from suing firearm manufacturers, retailers or trade groups. Instead, only the state could bring such a lawsuit. It’s retroactive to Aug. 27, 1999 — which happens to be three days before Gary filed its lawsuit.

The lawsuit accuses gun retailers and manufacturers of irresponsible businesses practices that allowed criminals to access guns. Defendants include Smith & Wesson, Colt's, Glock and Beretta.

It's one of dozens of lawsuits that cities across the country filed in the late 1990s, but it's the only one that has survived legal challenges and new laws intended to limit the gun industry’s liability for crimes committed with their products.

The new legislation has stirred controversy because it seeks to scuttle a pending legal case — one that has been a quarter century in the making. Even some Republicans are worried the bill could set a dangerous precedent.

"I believe that the legislature is getting out of their lane and they're going into an area that's going to open up Pandora's box," said Sen. Sue Glick, a Republican who voted against the bill. "Yes, this is a very old lawsuit. But the wheels of justice grind slowly."

The bill has strong support, however, from the firearms industry, which has dramatically ramped up its lobbying efforts at the Statehouse, and more recently hosted Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita at its annual convention in Las Vegas.

Those efforts come at a critical time for the lawsuit. The Lake County judge overseeing the case ruled last fall that retailers and manufacturers who are defendants in the case must comply with the city’s requests to turn over decades of internal records as part of a legal process known as discovery. City attorneys are seeking thousands of documents detailing manufacturers’ market research, retailers’ firearms purchases and any communications about gun trafficking and "straw sales" — in which a gun is purchased with the intent to resell it to someone prohibited from buying firearms.

The firearms industry has characterized those requests as a "fishing expedition" that will cost manufacturers millions of dollars. The industry has also raised concerns about the disclosure of information about gun sales and potential privacy breaches. Supporters of Gary's lawsuit say those concerns are overblown and point out that personal information is protected by court order.

With the legal case proceeding, legislative efforts have taken on a sense of urgency.

Senate majority leader Rodric Bray took the unusual step last month of assigning the bill to the Corrections and Criminal Law Committee, even though the bill has nothing to do with those topics. That committee is led by Sen. Aaron Freeman, who carried the legislation in the Senate.

Normally, the bill would have gone to the Senate Judicial Committee, as it did in the House, because that committee typically handles civil issues. But that committee's chairperson, Sen. Liz Brown, was among the Republicans who opposed the bill.

In fact, during a Senate hearing last month, Brown clashed with a representative from Rokita's office, which would be responsible for handling lawsuits against the gun industry under the measure.

Corrine Youngs, Rokita's policy director, said the attorney general's office hadn't investigated the allegations in Gary's lawsuit and had not taken a position on whether to pursue the claims.

In reality, though, Rokita had already taken a position. "That's not going to happen on my watch," he said a few weeks earlier at the gun industry trade show.

That concerned Brown.

"If we have the chief prosecutor for the state of Indiana saying, 'I don't care what happens... I will not pursue a certain industry, whether they're good or bad actors,' do you understand that makes it problematic?" Brown said.

Ultimately, though, the vast majority of her GOP colleagues in both chambers supported the bill.

The outcome left lawmakers from Gary, who staunchly opposed the bill, feeling defeated.

"Sometimes I get tired of going through the rigmarole of this process that's supposed to be a democratic process, but sometimes it appears that it's not," said Rep. Vernon Smith, a Democrat. "I’m tired of Gary being dogged out, kicked to the curb."

"And because of a strong lobbying group... we’re getting into a battle that we should not be in," he said.

Those comments prompted Speaker Todd Huston to give members an admonishment.

Let's talk about the legislation, he said, "and not the motives of the policy."

Vernal Coleman of ProPublica contributed to this story.

Contact IndyStar reporter Tony Cook at 317-444-6081 or [email protected]. Follow him on X: @IndyStarTony.

This article originally appeared on Indianapolis Star: Effort to kill Gary's lawsuit against gunmakers now in Holcomb's hands