PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — Lawyers didn’t want the case, and the odds were historically long. But last month, the families of nine victims of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre landed a $73 million settlement with the companies that insured Remington Arms.
So, how did they do it? To answer that question, we have to start at the beginning.
The 1990s saw record-high levels of gun violence, sparking a huge push for gun safety laws, said Saint Joseph’s University political science professor Dr. Susan Liebell. But in response, a federal law was enacted to protect gun manufacturers from potential lawsuits that could put a strain on the companies.
“There’s this big national law that is meant to prevent the families in this exact same situation from being able to sue,” said Liebell.
Manufacturers could be held accountable in instances of gun defects or contract breaches — or, “when the manufacturer knowingly violates a state or federal law related to the sale or marketing of a firearm,” she noted.
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Fast-forward to the Sandy Hook lawsuit, when lawyers found a new approach around these gun dealer protections. They used a Connecticut law, the consumer protections law, to make their case in that one federal exception.
Lawyers were able to show that a Bushmaster XM15-E2S rifle — the gun used in the 2012 shooting to kill 20 first-graders and six teachers — was a popular and commonly marketed weapon.
“You were marketing to the type of people that we know are shooters — somewhere between 88% and 98% of shooters in which genders are known were male-identifying people,” Liebell explained of the attorneys’ strategy. “And they were running not just those ads, but also ads that really echo first-person shooter video games — again, ones that tend to be used by younger male-identifying people. And so the slogans, the product placement, they were able to say, ‘You’re using these terms on purpose, you’re violating this Connecticut law.’ ”
Four insurers of the now-bankrupt Remington ultimately agreed to pay the full amount of coverage available — $73 million.
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Although it’s a strategy not open to many states, Liebell calls it “brilliant lawyering.”
“It’s really unusual for any gun manufacturer to be held accountable for a shooting, despite the fact that often you can trace which weapons were used,” she added.
However, if you think this landmark decision could set a new legal precedent for gun regulation, or impact how legislators tiptoe around the NRA, think again.
“I think this moves the needle, not because we’re going to see more successful lawsuits against gunmakers. I don’t think we are,” Liebell said. “I don’t think an active non-in-bankruptcy gunmaker would have settled in this way. But I do think we’re going to see states thinking about their own power in their own laws.”
Liebell explains that and how Remington went bankrupt — spoiler: Hillary Clinton plays a part — in the player below.
The Associated Press contributed to this report on the settlement.