Can that be done?

killer was negligent in allowing him access to guns/not getting him mental health treatment or some other noncriminal action. This is how victims of abuse sue their parents. They can not sue the sexual abuser since he or she is a criminal and home owners insurance will not cover criminal acts but they can sue the other parent claiming that the parent created an unsafe environment.

They could also sue the school district but that won't get them very far, since the government can use sovereign immunity.

They could sue the firearm manufacturer and distributor but that would also fail, since the NRA would have these guys lawyered up until the end of time.

So, the home owners insurance company is the most likely target.

If the shooter had ever seen a doctor or therapist, they could also try a malpractice suit. However, so far no court has held that a medical provider has a doctor-patient relationship with a third party, and unless they can prove a doctor patient relationship, they can't use malpractice.

in that she allowed the son access to the firearms by either leaving the safe open or letting the son know the combination so that he could open it himself.

However, since she was the first victim of that day, there not not much that a suit can do.

sell. His father thinks there might have been an un-diagnosed schizophrenia or psychopathy, or even a mis-diagnosis of his condition. Virtually every report suggest that although many of his behaviors and their sporting actives were known to professionals, there is no documentation that any of them saw into the future enough to suggest they do otherwise.

She was doing anything and everything she could to connect with her son, doing as good a job as any other single mother can do from what I can tell. Virtually all of the information about this has come out after, which is great for the talking-from-their-high-horse-of-self-righteousness crowd, but unless one wants to blame the mom for not being able to surpass the abilities of every fucking mental health professional he saw, or insist that she should have imagined her son who she had loved and cared for into college was going to shoot open a glass door and kill a bunch of kids, it is hard to see where she is liable. Do a lot of moms dream their kids are going to do that in your world?

You are entitled to your opinion, but I suspect you didn't meet and evaluate him, which makes that worth what 1 of about 416 million other opinions would be, eh?

Not much point in talking about this further.

Name the ex-husband/father as the defendant, since I assume he is the executor of the estate? Don't know how this works.

I think you make a product intended to kill and it is used to kill innocent people you should be held accountable for putting such a product out there.
Why should society have to put up with the proliferation of guns with those putting the guns out there not being held accountable for their use in killing innocent people?

As you well know, they are exempt from being sued if their product is used in a crime

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protection_of_Lawful_Commerce_in_Arms_Act

They are NOT exempt in cases resulting from defective products, breach of contract, criminal misconduct, and other actions for which they are directly responsible.

and to kill bad guys.

the manufacturer.

You know the law exists. You know the previous court determinations based on it. You're wasting everyone's time here.

You know, it's been shown to you many times, so there's no excuse.

The user is solely responsible for picking the target of the bullets.

In many ways. The right has control of many things in our life. The gun culture is one of these things.
But I think people will find a way because the will is there to break the hold the gun culture has on our society.

many of whom are Democrats. If you don't want the "right" to control it, get one of your own.

The right put Roberts and the other dunces on the Supreme Court. The right gave us our unregulated right to guns. It is ALEC and the NRA that write the laws and the gun manufactures are the reason. That support you like to claim exists is a house of cards. The wind will blow it away some day in the future.

right, and most don't have guns, I don't think that house is made of cards.

IMO, what created the NRA 800 lb. gorilla was the small but highly-placed elitist gun-control outlook. Not only is that outlook ineffective, it is another anti-populist view that the Democratic Party must explain away. Just another culture war.

not even close to being true and you know it.

That poster if I recall correctly, is a gun ban proponent.

Second hand smoke killing innocent people.

---

Or, alternatively, the makers of these guns?

Uphill battle regardless.

His mother bought them legally, but nothing would have prevented Adam Lanza from purchasing a rifle since he had no criminal record. He would have had to wait two weeks since he had no permit, but the state would have done a background check and approved the purchase

... that he didn't purchase the firearm he used, but Congress' negligence stands today.

There nothing reported to date that Adam Lanza was diagnosed by a medical professional as a danger to himself or others. For him to have been ruled a danger would have required a hearing before a judge and there wasn't anything that would have reached the legal threshold.

That would be like sueing Ford because one of their cars was driven by a drunk and someone was injured or killed.

1) the person with mental problems refuses treatment
2) the person wants treatment but has no money for private treatment
The state closed down all public facilities in my region. Not sure about other parts of the state but I think most were shut down. So now if you're mentally ill and threatening violence, you are likely to end up in jail. Not a great place for a mental patient.

of any type. That would be absurd.

And maybe the mother had insurance.

The shooter was an adult who lived with his mother and hadn't had contact with his father in over two years. Assigning responsibility to him would be an incredible legal feat.

The estate of the mother has probably already been concluded.

sending way more $ to Hartford in revenue than it gets back for education funding b/c it's relatively wealthy. The state redistributes the revenue from towns like Newtown to the rust belt poor cities of the state. So a school system and small place like Newtown may not have deep pockets to pay out millions to all these families. And the state is cutting everything since it's operating in the red. I asked a DEEP staffer how many rangers there were to control boats/noise on CT lakes and the staffer did not want to answer. I asked, "One?" No answer. "Two?" He said, "Something like that." There are many lakes in CT as well as ponds and if there are "something like two" people monitoring/controlling boats on all our lakes, it tells you the bad state we're in.

Deep pockets we don't have in CT But it's the same old story: some people are super rich, but many are struggling

http://www.ctnewsjunkie.com/archives/entry/nonpartisan_analysts_say_malloy_rescissions_dont_cut_as_much_as_estimated/

The NRA has so insulated the industry with protective laws, it's difficult to imagine who would be sued.

Last edited Wed Dec 10, 2014, 09:20 AM - Edit history (1)

For purposes of discussion, let's set aside the PLCAA.

The guns used by Lanza were not defectively designed or manufactured, they fully complied with CT's assault weapons ban standards and other applicable laws, were procured lawfully in the normal course of commerce, and then intentionally used in a criminal manner, including procuring the weapons through the murder of the lawful owner, his mother.

The gun manufacturers and dealers should no more be liable for the criminal misuse of their products than car manufacturers and dealers would be liable if Lanza stole his mother's car and ran over the schoolchildren.

One of the reasons why the PLCAA was passed was due to the strategy by gun control advocates try to do an end-run around the Constitution by outlawing guns through the courts or executive action by finding them somehow "inherently dangerous" despite the fact that they worked exactly as intended and were not defective and/or bankrupting manufacturers and dealers by forcing them to defend multitudes of frivolous lawsuits or appeals in areas where juries were unsympathetic to firearms. Note that the PLCAA does not provide any protection to firearms that are actually defectively designed or manufactured.

Straightforward, accurate posts like this are worth a hundred hair-on-fire emotional outbursts, however well-meaning they might be.

of suing in a case like this.

To me, it seems to reduce the value of the lives lost to an amount of $$$. Each of those children were worth far more than any amount of money the parents could win in a lawsuit. Just seems crass and even smarmy.

I remember my sister saying, and I had no doubts, if given the chance they'd give up everything they had and walk away with just the clothes on their back to have their daughter back.

John Walsh of America's Most Wanted fame said the same thing of the time when his child, Adam Walsh, was missing. He was being pressured to offer a reward, but he said he didn't have the reward money. Then he thought, I'll just sell everything I have to raise the reward money when I get him back.

I think the lawsuits are a desire to see some sort of justice prevail.

Adam Lanza, the murderer, is dead. His mother, who owned the guns, is dead.

The school had adequate security policies, but Lanza shot his way in through a glass door, so I doubt that the school could be held liable.

His father had nothing to do with any of this, and in fact, had not had contact with Adam in a long time, so suing him would be a waste of time.

Suing the gun manufacturers is pointless. Even if they were found to be in some way liable, their insurance company would cut a few checks, and it would be business as usual.

In the end, I'm not sure the parents would feel justice was served, regardless of winning a lawsuit.

possibly even allowing qualified teachers to be armed?

the question of how to do that is a serious one few want to deal with. As of 2 yrs ago, there were about 100k schools which Already had 20k armed personnel assigned to them. I suggested that block grants be made to schools, and to let them decide how best to use them: Fewer points of access, hardened structures, screening, more armed LEO, yes, even some trained & armed personnel for schools which were many miles from LEO. Let schools decide which best practice works. Maybe measures in place now are working to lessen casualties at schools. These should be discussed.

Incidentally, it was liberal-Democrat Barbara Boxer (anti-gun) who advocated patrolling schools with the National Guard, a position I don't support.

Next up is getting proper screening of every student. X-ray? Metal detectors? Both?

why not the suburbs? I was screened when I came into my inner city school where I taught.

snip: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandy_Hook_Elementary_School_shooting

Shortly after 9:35 am, using his mother's Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle,[29][30][31] Lanza shot his way through a glass panel next to the locked front entrance doors of the school.[32][33][34]

A security analysis should have picked up that first floor glass panels and windows are areas of risk and recommended some kind of protective measure. But you can get ridiculous about it. Should there be guards posted at every window, for example? Should all the windows of every school be replaced with concrete? Obviously, you can't overcome every security weakness 100%.

Sue... sue... sue!

Someone HAS to pay!

It's the American way after all.

Shit like this is why I'm all for a loser pays system.

"The Kochs thank you for your patronage"... Really?

Lawsuits like the one in the article, and the people and lawyers who file them, are part of the reason
the legal/judicial system here is totally fucked.

Sue whom?

"Don't worry, we'll find someone even if we have to wrongfully blame them".

Sue for what?

"Don't worry, we'll think of something even if we have to make it up".

And in the end... the lawyers walk away with a down payment on a mansion, and the plaintiffs
receive a $15.00 voucher good for the purchase of any of defendant XXX's product line.

The town of Newtown will acquire the home where Sandy Hook Elementary School shooter Adam Lanza lived and killed his mother.

The town's legislative council voted Wednesday to take ownership of the property at 36 Yogananda St., which is assessed at $360,000, from the Hudson City Savings Bank of New Jersey at no cost

The property was part of Nancy Lanza's estate to which son Ryan Lanza is the sole heir. In August, Ryan Lanza authorized Stamford attorney Samuel Starks, the administrator of the estate, to sell the property.

http://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-newtown-adam-lanza-house-20141203-story.html