If this happened in someones frontyard would they be responsible?

They did what they were supposed to do. Bad things happen and are usually the fault of the person/people who did the bad things, not the people who own the space where they happened.

Just no.

If they aren't armed they wouldn't have been able to do much. Plus some larger theaters have 20 individual theaters meaning, what? Hiring 20 guards? It will cost $40 for a movie ticket.

Working in retail management I have worked is some rather large buildings. One had 8 emergency exits plus to street level exits and two mall entrances. This building would have been smaller but I could still see it have 4 emergency exits plus the main entrance.

Sorry for shouting, but I am on my last nerve on this emergency exit thing.

Movie theaters typically have exits up by the screen so that the hundreds of people can exit from the front or the back of the theater.

They cannot be opened from outside but they are not emergency exits. They are not alarmed... that would be nuts. They are there to be used by people exiting the theater in the normal course of business.

My family saw Dark Night Rises and the doors inside the theater have an exit sign above the door. There is nothing about them being for emergencies only. In this case, one door opens to a side garage and the other to the sidewalk.

and an exit that the fire marshal has mandated so that people can escape from the theater in an emergency?

Eleven bucks a ticket.

It was locked to entrance from the outside. Customers used it when leaving the theater.

Some may have an alarm, but most don't. A lot of people use those doors when the movie is over. What they should do is put a timed alarm on the door. When the movie is over you may use it. If an emergency, that's a different story. It wouldn't hurt to have camera's either at the doors.

Not an 'emergency' exit. It was just one of the doors by which theatergoers left after the movie.

alarmed 'emergency' exits are usually doors that are not used to exit/enter frequently or at all like a door with some 'control' to its access.

Those doors, with the alarms, will usually have a brief window to be opened and not sound the alarm which works for employees or other people who will be 'smart' to not set it off. Your average 'customer' doesn't care about setting off the alarm so they can take a smoke break, hang out, etc so having an alarmed door that is frequently used by customers is a bad idea unless you want to have an alarm sounding in various theaters while a film is playing.

Then there is no requirement to have security guards covering exits it isn't required at a theater, the grocery store, the mall, etc.

It isn't negligence to expect things to work how they have for decades without a problem and not preparing for x number of crazy scenarios that are very unlikely to happen.

I have never been there of course, but we have some theaters which from the outside looks quite similar with similar number of individual screens. The one I usually go to has door in front which are exit only to get people out quickly after movies. But the side entrances of each individual screening room are emergency exits which lead to doors which exit into the parking lot from all sides of the building. I have never counted them but i would guess one or two on each side. But, these do have alarms.

I don't how what this shit did could be reasonably foreseeable as that term is used in tort law. So, no.

Whether the exit had an alarm may depend on local fire ordinances.

The suing would be for medical bills. Some of these people are uninsured.

save all that suing rage and energy for the NRA and those creeps who support them and their gun madness.

I guess that is how to lower unemployment.

or are you making that up?

The blame should go 100% squarely on psycho killer James Holmes. The theater and its staffers are also victims.

if not, and i don't think it is, then the answer is no.

I don't know whether those lawsuits will be successful - one could argue that the purpose of emergency exits in a movie theatre is to be sure people can get out if they have to in the event of a fire or other problem, not to prevent people from getting in.

I say hold the GUN MANUFACTURERS, and NRA liable. That theatre wanted a Gun Free Zone.

Let's arm the KINDER teachers too. I am sure you would agree with that too.

good grief

This isn't likely to be any exception.

He could have walked right through the front door with his weapons if he wanted.

Negligence is where a company deviates from a known and accepted industry practice and that deviation causes harm. There is no industry practice for companies to have security guards at their entrance/exit doors.

But I do not believe that is the case.

So the victims in any shooting can come back and claim that the dress shop, or the concert venue, or the bakery, didn't have a guard at the door?? No. One person is responsible for this and he is in jail.

Why do Americans think that money equates to love???

Have you ever been to a movie theater?

There will be suits. They will be utterly frivolous. Money will be exchanged in out of court settlements.

And that's unjust, but fine, since many of the injured are probably uninsured. In this country we use civil court en lieu of health insurance.

The shooter propped it open to go to his car to get suited up and grab his weapons. If the theater gets sued, then it should get sued for not having proper fire alarms on the doors.

if the doors are required to have alarms or not.

I'm guessing they're not required, otherwise annual fire inspections would have picked it up and cited the theater owners.

And what if alarms had been present?

Does anyone really believe that it would have prevented Holmes from carrying out his mission?

He would have simply come up with another plan... or possibly a different target.

But... even then, if alarms were required, and the theater owners didn't have them installed, that's still no justification for a lawsuit.

responsible. What the hell gives you the right to question my response to that...?

Tickets already cost a fucking fortune. I can just imagine how much they would go up to pay for the additional cost of metal detectors and armed security guards to take your kid to see Shrek 4.

This was a freak occurance. If the next massacre happens at a supermarket or a Starbucks are we going to require armed guards on every single block?

does 20 dollars sound for admission to see one show? Or are you one of the ones that sneak in from one show to another?

ANY lawsuit not placing the blame on Holmes is frivolous and claimants filing such lawsuits should be heavily fined.

And it was locked so that no one could enter from outside. There's no requirement or law that the doors be alarmed. Not yet, anyway.

Next thing you know, going to see a movie will be as difficult as getting on an airplane. And we all know how much we like that.

Here is an old-timey sounding definition: the failure of one owing a duty of care to another to do what a reasonable and prudent person would ordinarily have done under the circumstances, which omission is the proximate cause of injury to the other.

Whether and to what extent a duty of care exists between an entity accused of negiligence and the alleged victim of the negligence depends on several factors: (1) were the actions that give rise to the complained of harm reasonably foreseeable (2) was there a relationship of proximity between the plaintiff and defendant and (3)is it 'fair, just and reasonable' to impose liability.

The fact that virtually every other theater operated the way this theater operated without ever having been the target of an incident such as this makes it highly unlikely that the actions complained of were "reasonably foreseeable" or that the theater's actions were "unreasonable" as measured by the fictional "reasonable movie theater"' s behavior.

just the nutball.

Deep pockets, and Holmes doesn't have them.

But the question would be is it reasonably foreseeable? Pretty sad if we decide such a thing is reasonably foreseeable in our society.