Remington to pay $73M in settlement with families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims

How big is this? New precedent? Gun manufacturers will at least be more careful about how they market their guns.

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-new...reach-settlement-gunmaker-remington-rcna16274

Relatives of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting have reached a settlement with Remington, the maker of the rifle used in the massacre, marking the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting in the United States.

The families won $73 million in the settlement, according to the Associated Press. It comes after a protracted legal battle over how the gunmaker marketed its firearm.


A Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle was used in the December 2012 killings of 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Connecticut. The gunman fatally shot his mother before the elementary school rampage, then killed himself.

In their lawsuit against Remington, which has since filed for bankruptcy, families of the victims argued that the firearm maker irresponsibly marketed the weapon to at-risk young men such as the Sandy Hook shooter through product placement in violent video games.

Remington, based in Madison, North Carolina, has denied the allegations in the lawsuit.

In a press conference Tuesday morning, attorney for the families, Joshua Koskoff, opened by displaying photos of the victims and described details about the final days of their lives: the Christmas music that teacher Victoria Soto would listen to on her drive into work; the favorite diner breakfast that first-grader Jesse Lewis loved to eat; the Hanukkah candles that six-year-old Noah Pozner proudly lit for the first time.

Last July, attorneys for Remington offered nearly $33 million to the families to settle the suit. At the time, Joshua Koskoff praised Remington's insurers for their offer, even though the families did not accept at the time.

They "deserve credit for now realizing that promoting the use of AR-15s as weapons of war to civilians is indefensible. Insuring this kind of conduct is an unprofitable and untenable business model,” he said in a statement, The Associated Press reported.

The path to reaching a settlement has been complicated, with the lawsuit making its way through the state Supreme Court after Remington argued it should be shielded under a federal law designed to prevent gun manufacturers from being held liable for crimes in which their guns were used. In 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court said it would allow the suit to go forward.

In September, a couple months after presenting its settlement offer, Remington subpoenaed school records of children and educators killed in the massacre.

Attorneys for the families immediately moved to seal the records.

“We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first-grade academic, attendance and disciplinary records of these five schoolchildren,” Koskoff said, The Connecticut Post reported. “The records cannot possibly excuse Remington’s egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case. The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.”

 

Aren't settlements usually sealed? If so, likely won't know the full details. But it sounds like we might be able to see internal MKT planning and materials.

Sandy Hook Families Reach $73M Settlement with Remington (humanevents.com)

Remington, the gun manufacturer that designed the rifle used in the devastating Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, reached a settlement with the victims’ families.

The shooter, Adam Lanza, used a Remington rifle to kill 26 victims in Connecticut in 2012.

The now-bankrupt gun maker agreed to pay $73 million to the victims’ families, as well as allow families to release documents they had obtained over the course of their lawsuit showing how the manufacturer marketed the rifle.

“When the Sandy Hook families came to see us, it was about nine years ago, and it was in the aftermath of shattering loss, and they were stunned, and they didn’t know what to do or where to go,” plaintiffs’ attorney Joshua Koskoff said during a Tuesday press conference, per Fox News. “But they…had the energy and drive and motivation to do one thing, and that was to do whatever they could so that other families…would not have to go through the kind of pain and loss that they had.”

Families and one survivor of the shooting sued Remington in 2015 for their role in the school shooting, saying the company should have never sold such a weapon to the public.

“When it came to the military looking for the best weapon, the most lethal weapon, the most destructive weapon, and the weapon that could provide our soldiers, should they be forced to shoot and kill the enemies of our country and our freedom, they chose the AR-15,” Koskoff said. “The greatest military in the world…chose the AR-15.”

He added that the “mainstay” of AR-15 rifles is “still semiautomatic fire, so do not let anybody say it’s not a military weapon because it doesn’t have an automatic stay.”

“The gun has a role here, but there was a chilling part to what we learned about this, and that was about greed. I had thought the case was really about the gun, but it’s just as much about greed,” Koskoff said, adding that there was only a small market of safe AR-15 owners “for about 40 years” before Remington was “taken over by” private equity firm Cerberus and began to market the gun.

Remington had argued there was no evidence to conclude that its marketing had anything to do with the shooting, and that the lawsuit should have been dismissed because of a federal law that gives broad immunity to the gun industry.

However, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled Remington could be sued under state law over its marketing tactic.

 

I think the precedent is that victims were able to sue and proceed to trial (the supreme court declined an appeal to stop the lawsuit) to hold gun manuf liable for misuse of weapons they made. Specifically, it's related to how the gun was marketed.

CR331$$865 (ct.gov)
The plaintiffs' second theory of liability is that the defendants' advertised and marketed the XM15-E2S in an unethical, oppressive, immoral and unscrupulous manner. They contend that the defendants' have sought to grow the AR-15 market by extolling the militaristic and assaultive qualities of their AR-15 rifles and, specifically, the weapon's suitability for offensive combat missions. The plaintiffs argue that the defendants' militaristic marketing reinforces the image of the AR-15 as a combat weapon that is intended to be used for the purposes of waging war and killing human beings. Consistent with that image, the defendants' further promoted the XM15-E2S as a combat weapon system by designating in their product catalogues that the rifle comes “standard” with a 30 round magazine which, the plaintiffs allege, differs from how the defendants' promote and sell rifles for legal civilian purposes such as hunting and sport shooting.​

That will open up the door for many more lawsuits against gun manufacturers and sellers.

 

Then there is this. Election has consequences.

The Sandy Hook Settlement with Remington and the Road Ahead on Gun Violence | The New Yorker

The Sandy Hook families’ strategy was to make use of a tiny gap in the language of the P.L.C.A.A., which leaves room for cases in which a gun manufacturer “knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of the product.” The law that the families pointed to was the decades-old Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act, or cutpa. This move set off a chain of litigation about whether the trial could even proceed: the Remington side argued that claims under cutpa were exactly what the P.L.C.A.A. was meant to preclude, while the families argued the opposite. After the Connecticut Supreme Court decided in the families’ favor, the question was appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, in what at that point had become the case of Remington Arms Co. v. Donna L. Soto. (Donna Soto is the mother of Victoria Soto, a twenty-seven-year-old teacher who was killed while trying to protect her students from the shooter.) On November 12, 2019—in many ways, the crucial date in the case—the Court declined to hear the company’s petition, and this meant that the trial could proceed.

The Court did not issue an opinion in Remington v. Soto, or resolve substantive questions about the limits of the P.L.C.A.A. There is a separate case, known as Gustafson v. Springfield, which is working its way through the courts in Pennsylvania and directly challenges the constitutionality of the P.L.C.A.A. (That case was brought against the firearm manufacturer Springfield Armory by the parents of a thirteen-year-old boy who was killed when a fourteen-year-old friend pulled the trigger on what he thought was an unloaded semi-automatic handgun.) But the Court’s decision, and the prospect of a trial, substantially raised the potential costs for the company. The hope of the Sandy Hook families is that it will put fear into the hearts of all gunmakers. And maybe, with any luck, it will.

This settlement was, no doubt, an accomplishment on the part of the families and the lawyers who stood with them. It’s a tribute to the family members whom the plaintiffs lost. But joy may be hard to come by in this fight. The country has never been on a straight road forward in the effort to reduce gun violence. In just the two years since the Court declined to hear Remington v. Soto, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died, and Amy Coney Barrett replaced her. This spring, a conservative supermajority is expected to issue a ruling in New York State Rifle & Pistol Association Inc. v. Bruen, a challenge to that state’s laws for obtaining a license to carry a concealed handgun. That decision is not likely to mean real justice for the children of Sandy Hook, either.