Law Firm from Texas To Cut Their Charges in Mexico’s Case Against US Gun Makers

According to a deal announced this week, the plaintiffs’ attorneys who are representing Mexico in a case against US weapons manufacturers would cut their hourly costs in half and will be charging $1 million per year until the case is concluded.

According to FARA, which requires US law, lobbying, and firms of public relations to reveal certain advocacy connections with foreign clients, the US Justice Department formally declared Shadowen PLLC’s contract with Mexico.

According to the agreement, senior attorneys’ hourly fees would be lowered from $1,000 to $500 and junior lawyers’ hourly rates would be limited to $275. Unless the government and the business agree otherwise, the company claimed it would not charge more than $1 million each year. The paid legal services were to commence in January 2022, according to the contract.

Mexico accuses gun manufacturers in the United States, including Sturm, Ruger & Co,  Glock Inc, and Smith & Wesson Brands Inc, of assisting the illicit trafficking of their weapons to Mexican criminals such as drug cartels, in a complaint filed Aug. 4 in federal court in Boston. The complaint seeks billions in monetary damages and injunctive relief.

The main plaintiffs’ lawyer, Steve Shadowen, has been working on the case with the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence’s legal team in Washington, D.C. In a Friday email, he said he’d received a lot of offers of help and inquiries from other plaintiffs’ firms.

Shadowen was obliged under the contract to get permission from Mexico before engaging the services of any outside counsel. The lawyers will charge for their expenses and time and will be paid for them via this contract, according to the agreement.

Shadowen, who lives in Austin, Texas, claimed Mexican officials approached him following a mass shooting at a Walmart, Texas, in which twenty-two people were killed in 2019. He has worked with attorneys of the Mexican government on cases involving Mexican nationals killed by US border patrol agents, he claimed.

He said in his registration form with the Justice Department that he plans to attend news conferences and briefings, give press interviews, and talk at university and other symposia, as is usual for attorneys engaged in significant commercial lawsuits in the United States.

It’s uncommon for law firms to provide government clients with a reduction in their normal costs. Paul, Weiss, the law firm,  has agreed to reduce its costs to half in order to defend Oklahoma in cases involving a landmark tribal-rights judgment before the US Supreme Court.