Buffalo, N.Y. (WBEN) - With the one-year anniversary of the racist massacre at the Tops Friendly Market on Jefferson Avenue in Buffalo approaching Sunday, a wrongful death lawsuit naming social media companies and a number of other entities was filed Thursday.
Listen LIVE to WBEN:
"May 14 of last year was one of the most tragic days that the City of Buffalo has ever experienced," said Attorney John Elmore, representing some of the family members who lost loved ones in the May 14 attack. "I'm honored that I've had the respect as a lawyer in this community that four families that were affected by this terrible tragedy, they came to my law office for help. I realized that this was a tragedy that was bigger than me, that we needed to get help. And I wanted to make sure in order to make our community safer, to prevent these types of tragedies from happening, these families had the best legal representation on the planet."
Along with Elmore, the lawsuit was filed by attorneys from the Social Media Victims Law Center (Matthew Bergman) and the Giffords Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence (Adam Skaggs).
The complaint, filed with the State of New York Supreme Court, County of Erie, alleges that social media companies provided platforms that fed Payton Gendron violent racist content while maximizing their advertising revenue. The radicalized posts with which he engaged also provided access to the training, equipment, and expertise he needed to plan and execute the massacre which claimed the lives of 10 and injured three.
Named in the lawsuit are the owners of six social media platforms and streaming services; an Iowa-based manufacturer of body armor; a New York-based gun store; a Georgia-based manufacturer of custom gun accessories; and Gendron’s parents.
"Eventually together, we came up with this summons and complaint of 145 pages that was filed at 12:01 midnight last night. This is one of the first lawsuits of its kind to hold social media and other manufacturers responsible for this," Elmore explained. "We we have a big job to do. When you sue Facebook, when you sue Google, when you sue Reddit, when you sue Amazon, you're facing some of the most powerful, wealthiest corporations on the planet that have been profiting billions of dollars off of these social media platforms, and sometimes allowing and directing dangerous content towards people that have radicalized people, that actually radicalized Payton Gendron to commit this murder."
Elmore added extremist White supremacists have been using the social media platforms to radicalize homegrown terrorists like Gendron, and Gendron admitted that was the cause of him to be the way that he is when he entered his guilty plea.
While Elmore acknowledges this legal battle will not be an easy one, he says the legal team involved will be ready for the fight for the long haul.
"I'm going to guarantee you two things: No. 1, everybody at this table is going to work tirelessly and give 100%, because there are other people, other entities that were responsible for what happened in Buffalo. Our goal is to make this community safer. Our goal is to make this country safer. Our goal is to make sure that there's never a mass shooting in this country again, because it seems like every week or every month there's another mass shooting somewhere. If you look at what happened, this last one in Texas, that was somebody that was radicalized by mass media as well. We're not going to stop until we win, because I'm going to tell you, we're going to win, and when we win, these dangers that are out there lurking now are going to be stopped, and this community is going to be safer. And America is going to be a better place to live."
Hear more from Friday's press conference with Elmore, and members of the victims' families available in the player below:
Related
