Not sure about the corporate shield here, but if taken as a violation of fiduciary duty, shareholders may be able to file suit. Then depending how that went, Mexico (et al.) may also be able to go after them in civil court
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$10 billion US is a lot of money. It’s not nearly enough to cover even the financial damage the gun industry has inflicted on the US, Mexico, and the rest of Central America, and doesn’t even begin to touch on the immeasurable cost in human lives snuffed out and/or shattered.
Sue the bastards out of business.
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Generally speaking, no. A corporate officer acting on behalf of the company in good faith and within the scope of their authority is not personally liable for such acts.
Though the Sackler family does come to mind.
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Roughly equivalent to Phillip Morris shareholders suing on the basis that the company was selling tobacco.
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IIRC, they were sued for product misrepresentation. Selling tobacco was legal
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I think we see that the Second Amendment is wildly incorrect.
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Guns do not ensure the security of a free state. The unchecked proliferation of powerful armaments creates insecurity and instability.
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Well-regulated is not represented by non-regulation.
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A right to bear arms is not inalienable.
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Tell us you didn’t read the article without telling us you didn’t read the article
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I think the current interpretation of the Second Amendment leaves much to be desired.
It seems to be the product of fantasies about a paradise ruled by warlords and their minions.
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Maybe when the car is on auto-pilot and slams into a crowd against the drunk’s efforts to stop it?
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If the plaintiff is able to prove the corporate officer knew his decisions would result in the corporation acting illegally, I am not so sure the corporate shield would protect him. But of course, it is never in good faith or within the scope of anyone’s authority to act illegally.
I read somewhere that Donald Trump along with Eric and Don Jr. were recently sued along with the Trump Organization for fraud. They are all jointly and severably liable for about $450,000,000 in damages. The corporate shield didn’t protect them because they all engaged in the fraud. The corporate shield exists but doesn’t protect an officer if he uses the corporation to do something illegal.
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As I said, “Generally speaking, no.”
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You and others might find this interesting reading, if you don’t already know about it.
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Good for Mexico!
I hope they win.
Saturday lunch was a trip to Nogales, Sonora… on the border. A lovely sit down lunch on the second floor balcony overlooking Calle Obregon ave. On my last visit (have not been back in several years) I was treated to a middle of the street gunfight between two groups of thugs. It took several extra hours to get back into Arizona. Luckily I was not killed or wounded.
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I’ve always thought Heller was wrongly decided. The difficulty though is that the context for 2A is almost worse – with people saying things that today seem completely insane. To wit, (paraphrasing here) Would-be tyrants would think twice if every man were armed with a musket, 20 musket-balls, and powder. IOW, it really does appear that overthrowing governments was on the menu when 2A was ratified
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In the meanwhile, Americans should demand to tax the hell out of bullets, no 2nd Amendment ptotection for that.
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You have to connect a lot of dots to get to personal liability of the officers and directors.
The analogy to the tobacco industry and big pharma opioid manufacturers is imperfect. Unlike tobacco and pharma, the gun industry operates under the impenetrable wall of the 2nd Amendment as misconstrued by Scalia in Heller and grossly expanded by the current Supreme Court. There is no direct path to the manufacturer despite the well known dangers of the product, which is why Mexico has to rely on the gun trafficking statutes (18 U.S. Code §933 - Trafficking in firearms). Going from that tenuous link to the knowing and intentional violation of law required to reach personal liability of the officers and directors is not going to happen. It has never happened in tobacco, and as @txlawyer mentioned above, the Sackler family of opioid fame is trying to duck personal liability in bankruptcy court.
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A good excuse to post this comedy bit:
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It also acknowledged that its ruling only applies to state court actions. The gun nuts will simply go to the federal courts to void any reasonable gun law.
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I wonder what the correlation would be between the criminal use of those guns and asylum seekers from those countries.
(I don’t actually wonder)
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