Sandy Hook Families Reach $73M Settlement With Gun-Maker: Update

NEWTOWN, CT — Families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting reportedly have reached a $73 million settlement in the lawsuit against Remington Arms, the gun manufacturer that made the Bushmaster AR-15, which the shooter used in the mass killing at the elementary school.

All the details of the settlement were not available, but attorney Josh Koskoff, Lead Counsel and Partner at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, said in a statement that the settlement should serve as "wake up call" to gun manufacturers, insurance companies and others.

"These nine families have shared a single goal from the very beginning: to do whatever they could to help prevent the next Sandy Hook," Koskoff said. "It is hard to imagine an outcome that better accomplishes that goal. This victory should serve as a wake up call not only to the gun industry, but also the insurance and banking companies that prop it up. For the gun industry, it’s time to stop recklessly marketing all guns to all people for all uses and instead ask how marketing can lower risk rather than court it. For the insurance and banking industries, it’s time to recognize the financial cost of underwriting companies that elevate profit by escalating risk. Our hope is that this victory will be the first boulder in the avalanche that forces that change.

The settlement marks the first time a gun-maker has been held liable for a mass shooting, ABC News reported.

"My beautiful butterfly, Dylan, is gone because Remington prioritized its profit over my son's safety," said Nicole Hockley, whose son, Dylan Hockley, was killed in the shooting. "Marketing weapons of war directly to young people known to have a strong fascination with firearms is reckless and, as too many families know, deadly conduct. Using marketing to convey that a person is more powerful or more masculine by using a particular type or brand of firearm is deeply irresponsible. My hope is that by facing and finally being penalized for the impact of their work, gun companies, along with the insurance and banking industries that enable them, will be forced to make their business practices safer than they have ever been."

The other plaintiffs in the case are the families of Victoria Soto, Mary Sherlach, Noah Pozner, Lauren Rousseau, Benjamin Wheeler, Jesse Lewis, Daniel Barden and Rachael D’Avino.

Remington filed for bankruptcy in 2018, in part out of fear of a potential adverse court ruling in the case.

U.S. Sen. Chris Murphy, a Democrat who has worked on gun control legislation, congratulated the families on the settlement victory.

"Thanks to the bravery and tireless work of these Sandy Hook families, Remington will be held accountable for their role in the Sandy Hook shooting," the Connecticut Senator said in a statement. "You can't market weapons of war to the masses and claim to have no role in our nation's gun violence epidemic. Today sends the clear message to the gun industry that the days of their near-total immunity from responsibility are over. This is a groundbreaking victory."

According to Koskoff, the families brought this case, first filed in December 2014, "to learn why and how Remington marketed the AR-15 specifically to young, violence-prone men."

The wrongful death lawsuit, he said, faced a seemingly insurmountable legal hurdle: a protection for firearms manufacturers, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, that was believed to be a blanket immunity in mass shooting cases.

Koskoff said that legal experts called the case "a losing proposition," "an extraordinary reach" and a "remote possibility."

With fellow counsel Alinor Sterling, Koskoff was able to show that Remington's aggressive and violence-glorifying marketing of its AR-15s "was an unfair trade practice, a violation of Connecticut law."

The legal strategy meant that arms act's protection for firearms manufacturers did not apply, which allowed the case to move forward. Koskoff said the families' case is often compared to the first cases in the historic tobacco litigation, important both because it shows that winning against a previously impervious industry is possible, and because it lifts the veil of corporate secrecy.

By obtaining thousands of pages of internal documents and conducting multiple depositions of Remington's leadership and marketing teams, the families and Koskoff legal team were able to show that profit goals contributed to the gun's reach.

Those profit goals, set by parent company Cerberus, led to Remington changing "its previously sober approach to marketing firearms in favor of an aggressive, multi-media campaign that pushed sales of AR-15s through product placement in first-person shooter videogames and by touting the AR-15's effectiveness" at killing.

"Before we brought this case, gunmakers thought they could not be held accountable for mass shootings," said Sterling, who is also a partner at Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder. "This case shows they can be. It is already serving as a model for other gun cases across the country. When an industry can be held accountable for its behavior, that behavior becomes more responsible."

Po Murray, Chairwoman of Newtown Action Alliance, called on insurance companies and investors to stop doing business with "manufacturers of weapons of war."

"Finally, a gun manufacturer and their insurers have been held accountable for the gun violence crisis in our nation," Murray said in a statement. "No amount of settlement dollars will bring back the Sandy Hook families' children and loved ones but their lawsuit against Remington has given other families of shooting victims some hope that they too can pursue justice in the courts.

"The families were interested in the discovery phase of the lawsuit to shed light on the gun industry’s dangerous marketing tactics that place profit over public safety. We hope that thousands of pages of internal company documents that proved Remington's wrongdoing will be made public so that other gun manufacturers and their insurers and investors will learn important lessons and help us prevent future mass shootings and all forms of gun violence."