By Marilyn Odendahl
The Indiana Citizen
January 6, 2026
For the Gary gun lawsuit that has survived three appeals and multiple changes to state statute, the recent order to dismiss from the Court of Appeals of Indiana might be yet another chapter, rather than the end of the decades-old litigation.
The December ruling from the appellate court reversed the Lake County Superior Court’s decision denying the defendants’ motion to toss the case. In particular, the COA held that the Reservation Statute, which mandates that only the state may sue a firearm or ammunition manufacturer, trade association, seller or dealer, was constitutional. Also, the unanimous bench found the Indiana General Assembly could craft and pass an amendment that specifically snuffed out this ongoing lawsuit.
“Unfair as it may appear, the legislature can legally do exactly what it did in this case, and we cannot second-guess its public policy determinations in this regard,” Chief Judge Robert Altice wrote in Smith & Wesson Corp., et al. v. City of Gary, Indiana, 24A-CT-2381.
Indiana Attorney General Todd Rokita called the court’s ruling a victory.
“The result helps ensure that firearms remain available to law-abiding citizens, preventing a single city or handful of cities from using lawsuits to force changes to the way they are sold,” Rokita said in a statement. “Our office will continue defending your constitutional rights and keeping firearms accessible to responsible, law-abiding citizens.”
State Sen. Rodney Pol, D-Chesterton, had worked on the case starting in 2014, when he began serving as an attorney for the city of Gary. He said he was “pretty disappointed” by the COA’s opinion and had hoped the appellate panel would adopt the view of the trial court that the General Assembly cannot upend the litigation process by passing laws to protect specific industries named as defendants.
“This sends a shout-out to these mega corporations (that) if you can bend the ear of some of these legislators, you will never be held accountable for wrongful deeds,” Pol told The Indiana Citizen. “And that, to me, is terrifying … as somebody who thinks that the job of government is to make sure that the little guy is going to be OK and that (the little guy) will be made whole if something is done wrong to (him or her).”
Rokita described the lawsuit as being filed “against law-abiding firearm manufacturers and sellers.”
However, the complaint, originally filed in Lake County Superior Court on Aug. 30, 1999, alleged the defendant gunmakers, wholesalers and retailers were unlawfully marketing and distributing handguns.
According to court documents, the city of Gary asserted the manufacturers allegedly knew a small number of retailers were selling firearms to intermediaries in so-called “straw purchases” for individuals who were prohibited by law from buying guns. Moreover, the city alleged the manufacturers and distributors could have changed the distribution system to prevent the unlawful sales but chose not to do that.
Court documents note that from 1997 through 2000, a total of 2,136 handguns that had been used in crimes were recovered. Of those, 764 were sold through dealers named as defendants in the lawsuit.
The city filed negligence and public-nuisance claims against the defendants.
In the decades that followed the filing of the amended complaint in 2001, the Court of Appeals and the Indiana Supreme Court issued rulings that kept the case alive. Meanwhile, the General Assembly passed laws that targeted the lawsuit by prohibiting legal actions against the gun industry.
The state Supreme Court reversed the trial court’s dismissal of the case in 2003. Subsequently, it denied transfer to rulings from the Court of Appeals in 2005 and 2019, which allowed the lawsuit to continue in the trial court.
In the Statehouse, lawmakers passed the Immunity Statute in 2001, prohibiting a lawsuit against a firearm or ammunition manufacturer, trade association or seller. An amendment signed into law in 2015 made the statute retroactive to Aug. 27, 1999, three days before the Gary lawsuit was filed. Most recently, legislators passed House Enrolled Act 1235 in 2024, which created the Reservation Statute.
The city of Gary filed its lawsuit during a time when municipalities across the country were taking legal action against the gun industry, according to a March 2024 article by ProPublica. Other state legislatures and legal maneuvers have derailed all of that litigation so that now Gary’s litigation is the last from that original group still churning through the courts.
ProPublica linked the Reservation Statute to a $143,000 lobbying effort in the Indiana Statehouse in 2023 by a firearms industry group called the National Shooting Sports Foundation. Rokita backed the measure and, according to ProPublica, said in an interview at the NSSF trade show in Las Vegas that filing a lawsuit against the gun industry was “not gonna happen on my watch.”
Neither Pol, the state senator, nor Indiana Solicitor General James Barta, who argued the current Gary case before the Court of Appeals, were in college when the original complaint was filed. Rokita only had his law license for four years.
In a statement, Barta defended the General Assembly’s passage of HEA 1235.
“This unanimous ruling confirms the legislature’s clear intent and authority to preempt local governments from bringing these types of lawsuits, ensuring uniform statewide policy and protecting the rights of law-abiding Hoosiers from piecemeal litigation that could restrict access to firearms,” Barta said.
Pol said he hopes the case goes before the Indiana Supreme Court and the justices take a harder look at the ramifications of the legislature’s action. Essentially, he said, the Statehouse shut down the judicial branch.
“We have to make sure that we’re respecting those separations of powers, because we’re starting to see those lines blurred,” Pol said. “Once you see that with any two branches of government, things start to fall apart.”
The Court of Appeals rejected the city’s argument that the Reservation Statute violated the separation of powers as defined by Article 3, Section 1, of the Indiana Constitution.
In agreeing with the defendants and the state that the separation of powers doctrine does not block new legislation which would impact ongoing litigation, the appellate panel cited to its 2024 ruling in a dispute over Rokita’s effort to keep private a report about the private sector job he retained when he became attorney general. The case, Rokita v. Tully, was derailed when the legislature changed state law to bar the public disclosure of informal advisory opinions issued by the Indiana inspector general.
“Courts must refrain from ‘infringing upon the legislature’s province to write and revise the law,’” Altice wrote in the majority opinion, quoting Tully.
Also, the Court of Appeals found the Reservation Statute is a general law and does not run afoul of Article 4, Section 22, of the Indiana Constitution, which prohibits “local or special” legislation. Although the statute affects only the city of Gary’s gun lawsuit, the appellate court noted the provision does not single out a particular city by name or a unique characteristic. Instead, the law bars communities across the state from independently suing the gun industry.
“A plain reading of the statute shows statewide application and the mere fact that only one political subdivision – the City – is currently maintaining such an action does not suggest otherwise,” Altice wrote.
Pol said the investigations that led to Gary’s lawsuit and the evidence collected showed that firearms were being sold without any guardrails on the process. The case, he said, demonstrated the importance of trying to stop the devastation that Gary and other communities are enduring.
Pointing to previous settlements holding large industries accountable for the harm caused to Hoosiers, Pol said the appellate ruling in the Gary case might send the message that other industries can now “bulldoze their way through liability.”
“We actually held the opioid industry accountable,” Pol said. “We held tobacco accountable. But now, it seems to be this shift of, ‘Hey, well, guess what? If you just go to these state legislators, talk them into it, you can get away scot-free.’ That really scares me very much.”
Dwight Adams, an editor and writer based in Indianapolis, edited this article. He is a former content editor, copy editor and digital producer at The Indianapolis Star and IndyStar.com, and worked as a planner for other newspapers, including the Louisville Courier Journal.
The Indiana Citizen is a nonpartisan, nonprofit platform dedicated to increasing the number of informed and engaged Hoosier citizens. We are operated by the Indiana Citizen Education Foundation, Inc., a 501(c)(3) public charity. For questions about the story, contact Marilyn Odendahl at marilyn.odendahl@indianacitizen.org.
