Remington gunsmith to pay families $73 million
The families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre on Tuesday agreed to a $73 million settlement against the maker of the gun used in the deadly 2012 shooting.
The settlement follows years of litigation with Remington Arms, the maker of the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle that was used to kill 20 first graders and six elementary school teachers in Newtown, Connecticut.
Nicole Hockley, whose son Dylan was one of the first graders killed, called the settlement a “historic historic victory”. Hockley is also co-founder and CEO of the Sandy Hook Promise Foundation, a nonprofit focused on gun violence prevention founded by family members of Sandy Hook victims.
“The firearms industry has been shielded from being held responsible for its part in these tragedies,” she said at a press conference on Tuesday. “Today, that changes.”
Four insurers of Remington, which has filed for bankruptcy twice in two years, have agreed to pay the $73 million.
As part of the settlement, Remington also agreed to allow the families to release documents they obtained during the trial, including those that show how the gunmaker marketed the gun, Joshua Koskoff said. , the lead attorney representing the families.
Hockley said the families “can’t wait” to release the thousands of internal documents they’ve obtained, which she says “paint the picture of a company that went astray by choosing more aggressive marketing campaigns to for profit, regardless of the impact”.
“From the start, it wasn’t about the money,” Koskoff said. “It was about getting answers, learning about those decisions.”
He added: “The keystone of this settlement is that it allows these families the right to share information about what they have learned.”
Remington previously offered the families of the victims $33 million as part of a possible settlement last year. Koskoff told USA TODAY in August that the supply was “very insufficient.”
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The lawsuit tested the reach of a federal law that grants gun manufacturers broad immunity from prosecution stemming from crimes committed with their products.
The Connecticut civil court case hinged on how Remington marketed the rifle, accusing the gunmaker of targeting at-risk young men through product placement in violent video games and advertisements, including one that used the phrase “Consider Your Man Card Reissued”.
The victims’ families argued that Remington violated Connecticut’s unfair trade practices law when it “knowingly marketed and promoted the Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle for use in assaults on human beings,” according to the lawsuit.
“The marketing essentially glorifies violence and the military use of the weapon to young men,” Koskoff previously told USA TODAY.
Remington’s attorneys denied the allegations in court and argued there was no evidence to show Remington’s marketing had anything to do with the shooting.
Remington did not respond to requests for comment on Tuesday.
The United States Supreme Court declined to hear the case after it had already taken several turns, including moving from a state superior court to the state Supreme Court and back again.
The case has been closely watched by gunmakers, as well as gun law experts, who said the lawsuit could shatter long-held perceptions about manufacturers’ ability to weapons to resist prosecution for the criminal use of the weapons they manufacture. Experts also told USA TODAY that the litigation could provide rare insight into how a gunmaker markets its products and shift national conversations about gun violence to focus on the marketing of guns.
Koskoff said the federal law “gave the gun industry the perception that nothing they did could ever come under scrutiny, nothing they did could ever result in responsibility”. He said the outcome of the trial “shattered perception”.
“Immunity protecting the gun industry is not bulletproof,” he said.
Contribute: The Associated Press
USA Today
