A federal judge partially dismissed a $10 billion lawsuit from the Mexican government claiming several U.S. gun manufacturers were responsible for facilitating arms trafficking to cartels, according to court documents released earlier this week.
On Wednesday, Judge F. Dennis Saylor of the U.S. District Court of Massachusetts dismissed Mexico's complaints against six major gun manufacturers, ruling that Mexico could not sue because they did not prove sufficient harm and none of the companies were incorporated in Massachusetts, according to the filings.
In a 2021 lawsuit, the Mexican government alleged in a lawsuit filed that the companies contributed to illegal firearms trafficking to Mexican cartels across the southern border from sales in Massachusetts through a Boston-based distributor, Witmer Public Safety Group.
“The core question for jurisdictional purposes is whether Mexico's claims against the six moving defendants ‘arise' from their business transactions in Massachusetts. As to those defendants, the connection of this matter to Massachusetts is gossamer-thin at best,” Saylor wrote. “The government of Mexico is obviously not a citizen of Massachusetts. None of the six moving defendants is incorporated in Massachusetts, and none has a principal place of business in Massachusetts. There is no evidence that any of them have a manufacturing facility, or even a sales office, in Massachusetts. None of the alleged injuries occurred in Massachusetts. No Massachusetts citizen is alleged to have suffered any injury. And plaintiff has not identified any specific firearm, or set of firearms, that was sold in Massachusetts and caused injury in Mexico.”
According to The Daily Caller, Saylor said Mexico did not provide “sufficient proof” that the six gun manufacturers in question could be blamed for deaths caused by cartels in Mexico using trafficked firearms, according to the filings. Saylor added that Mexico has “no specific proof” that the companies in question sold “weapons to individual dealers in Massachusetts, and that some weapons sold by those dealers—although not necessarily those supplied by the six defendants—were illegally trafficked to Mexico.”
“Whether plaintiff might be able to establish personal jurisdiction over any of the six defendants in a state where it is actually located—or that otherwise has some reasonable connection to the pleaded claims—is not a question before this Court,” Saylor wrote. “For now, it is enough to say that the plaintiff cannot do so here. Accordingly, and for the following reasons, defendants' motions to dismiss will be granted.”
Lawrence G. Keane, senior vice president and general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms industry trade organization, was pleased with the ruling but expressed concern for the remaining companies in the case.
“[The National Shooting Sports Foundation] is pleased Mexico's obvious forum shopping scheme by filing in federal court in Boston has failed. However, several defendants remain in the case which was correctly dismissed in the district court based on the Protection of Lawful Commerce Act,” Keane told the Daily Caller News Foundation. “We are optimistic the U.S. Supreme Court will grant the pending petition asking the court to correct the First Circuit Court of Appeals' ruling that reversed the district court order and reinstated the case. Mexico should focus its efforts on bring Mexican narco-terrorists to justice in Mexican courtrooms instead of trying to scapegoat the lawful firearm industry.”
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