Mexico’s T&T-backed lawsuit against US gun-makers fails in court

The Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment has failed in its at­tempt to pur­sue a nov­el US$10 bil­lion against a group of ma­jor Unit­ed States gun man­u­fac­tur­ers, which was sup­port­ed by sev­er­al Cari­com coun­tries in­clud­ing T&T. 

De­liv­er­ing sev­er­al de­ci­sions, yes­ter­day, the US Supreme Court ruled that Mex­i­co could not pur­sue the law­suit claim­ing that the com­pa­nies were com­plic­it in the il­lic­it arms trade to drug car­tels and crim­i­nal or­gan­i­sa­tions. 

Jus­tice Ele­na Ka­gan, who de­liv­ered the nine-mem­ber pan­el’s views on the case, stat­ed that the sev­en man­u­fac­tur­ers in­clud­ing Smith and Wes­son, Glock, Ruger and Beretta were pro­tect­ed by the pro­vi­sions of the Pro­tec­tion of Law­ful Com­merce in Arms Act (PLCAA). 

The leg­is­la­tion, passed in 2005, pro­tects firearm man­u­fac­tur­ers and deal­ers from be­ing held li­able when crimes are com­mit­ted by third par­ties us­ing their prod­ucts. 

Jus­tice Ka­gan and her col­leagues ruled that “in­dif­fer­ence” to the traf­fick­ing of firearms does not equate to wil­ful­ly as­sist­ing a crim­i­nal en­ter­prise as al­leged by the Mex­i­can gov­ern­ment. 

“Mex­i­co’s com­plaint does not plau­si­bly al­lege that the de­fen­dant man­u­fac­tur­ers aid­ed and abet­ted gun deal­ers’ un­law­ful sales of firearms to Mex­i­can traf­fick­ers,” Jus­tice Ka­gan said. 

“We have lit­tle doubt that, as the com­plaint as­serts, some such sales take place and that the man­u­fac­tur­ers know they do. But still, Mex­i­co has not ad­e­quate­ly plead­ed what it needs to: that the man­u­fac­tur­ers ‘par­tic­i­pate in those sales as in some­thing that they wish to bring about’,” she added. 

Al­most a year af­ter the case was first filed in 2021, it was re­ject­ed by a fed­er­al cir­cuit judge on sim­i­lar grounds to those re­lied on by the US Supreme Court. 

In Jan­u­ary, last year, Mex­i­co re­ceived a life­line as the US Court of Ap­peals re­versed the ear­li­er de­ci­sion with the pan­el rul­ing that the pro­vi­sions of the PLCAA did not ap­ply. 

Af­ter last year’s rul­ing, for­mer For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Dr Amery Browne not­ed that this coun­try was mon­i­tor­ing the case as T&T and oth­er Cari­com na­tions had a mi­nor role in as­sist­ing it. 

At the time, for­mer prime min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley knocked the op­po­si­tion led by cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bissess­er for not sup­port­ing his gov­ern­ment’s mi­nor par­tic­i­pa­tion in the case.