by Earlier this week, news broke that Remington was offering to pay the Newtown families who had sued the company $33 million to settle the lawsuit.
Gunmaker Remington Arms Co. has offered around $33 million to settle a lawsuit brought by nine families of the victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting.
Remington Arms Co. LLC and Remington Outdoors Co. Inc., collectively referred to as “Remington,” offered $3.66 million to each of the nine plaintiffs in the lawsuit against them over the 2012 Newtown, Conn., mass shooting, which left 20 children and six adults dead.
Actually as NBC Connecticut makes clear, it is the two insurance companies who might be on the hook in the case who are offering to settle. This is common practice for insurance companies who make the calculation that it is cheaper to pay off the plaintiffs rather than continue to rack up legal fees.
That the case is even going forward is due to a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling that said Remington could be sued for potentially violating the state’s unethical advertising statutes. This was an end around the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act which said firearms companies could not be sued for criminal misuse of a firearm. Unfortunately, the US Supreme Court denied certiorari to Remington when they appealed.
The problem with settling is that it sets a bad precedent. So bad that it encourages other plaintiffs attorneys to sue other manufacturers when their products are criminally misused.
Thus, we have notice today of a case in Ohio where Cooper Elliott, a torts law firm that has colluded with the Brady Center in the past, plans to sue the US affiliate of a South Korean magazine manufacturer. This is based upon the use of their 100-round magazine in a mass casualty event in Dayton, Ohio in 2019.
Family members of some of the Dayton mass shooting victims will be filing a wrongful death lawsuit against the manufacturer of the 100-round magazine used in the attack.
In a news release, Columbus-based law firm Cooper Elliott said the lawsuit will be filed against Kyung Chang Industry USA Inc. and its related South Korean company on Monday. Claims against the company include negligence, negligent entrustment and public nuisance…
According to Cooper Elliott, their client claims there are only two uses of a 100-round magazine: by the military or in a mass shooting.
“The risks to public safety of making and selling these to civilians outweigh any benefits. They are also not aware of any meaningful protocols, checks, or oversight KCI has in place to make sure its product isn’t used in a mass shooting. Therefore, it was foreseeable that, without sufficient safeguards, providing 100-round magazines to the general public would likely result in them being used in a mass shooting.”
Cooper Elliott says the lawsuit will be filed in state court in Clark County, Nevada where KCI is located.
This is a BS lawsuit but once ambulance chasers start to see “dane-geld” being paid, they will start chasing it. This is what the PLCAA was supposed to prevent.
I think Rudyard Kipling said it best in his poem Dane-Geld.
It is always a temptation to an armed and agile nation To call upon a neighbour and to say: -- "We invaded you last night--we are quite prepared to fight, Unless you pay us cash to go away." And that is called asking for Dane-geld, And the people who ask it explain That you've only to pay 'em the Dane-geld And then you'll get rid of the Dane! It is always a temptation for a rich and lazy nation, To puff and look important and to say: -- "Though we know we should defeat you, we have not the time to meet you. We will therefore pay you cash to go away." And that is called paying the Dane-geld; But we've proved it again and again, That if once you have paid him the Dane-geld You never get rid of the Dane. It is wrong to put temptation in the path of any nation, For fear they should succumb and go astray; So when you are requested to pay up or be molested, You will find it better policy to say: -- "We never pay any-one Dane-geld, No matter how trifling the cost; For the end of that game is oppression and shame, And the nation that pays it is lost!"