25 Years!

This just amazes me. I thought justice was supposed to be “speedy”.

Historic Gun Suit Survives Serious Legal Threat Engineered by Indiana Republicans

Republicans in Indiana’s legislature passed a bill this year intended as the final blow to a long-running lawsuit filed by the city of Gary against gun manufacturers seeking to hold them accountable for local illegal gun sales.

The lawmakers even included language making the bill retroactive to ensure that it would apply to the Gary suit, which was filed nearly a quarter century ago.

On Monday, that effort failed.

Indiana Superior Court Judge John Sedia ruled that while the law barring cities from pursuing lawsuits against the gun industry is constitutional, applying it retroactively would “violate years of vested rights and constitutional guarantees.” It was a rare courtroom setback for makers of firearms in the U.S.

Gary’s case is the last of a generation of civil suits that made similar claims against the gun industry. Attorneys for gun manufacturers and retailers filed for the case to be dismissed based on the new Indiana law, which placed the power to sue solely with the state’s attorney general.

The bill’s backers made no secret that the Gary case was the bill’s target. It included language to make it retroactive to Aug. 27, 1999 — three days before the city filed its lawsuit. But that decision appears to have doomed the industry’s challenge.

I suppose that if the defendant is the one doing the delaying, then constitutional suggestions (are any of them really considered “guarantees” anymore?) may not be considered all that important.

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