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Attorneys for the families who filed the suit against the now-bankrupt Remington and its four insurers, announced on Tuesday, Feb. 15 that they had reached the settlement, representing the first time a gun manufacturer has been held liable for a mass shooting in the US.
As part of the settlement, lawyers for the families said that Remington agreed to release thousands of pages of internal company documents, including possible plans for how to market the weapon used in the massacre.
The settlement came nearly eight years after the families sued the maker of the Bushmaster XM15-E2S semiautomatic rifle that was used in the 2012 mass shooting at the Newtown elementary school in Fairfield County that claimed the lives of 20 children and six adult staff members.
The families sued Remington in 2014, alleging it should be held partially responsible for the shooting because of its marketing strategy
In a statement, Nicole Hockley, whose 6-year-old son Dylan was killed by shooter Adam Lanza on Dec. 14, 2012, called out Remington during a Tuesday news conference, which she said “prioritized profit over (her) son’s safety.”
“My beautiful butterfly, Dylan, is gone because Remington prioritized its profit over my son's safety,” she said. “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,” she continued.
“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.”
Francine Wheeler, the mother of 6-year-old victim Benjamin Wheeler, said at Tuesday’s news conference that "today is about how and why he died. Today is about what is right and what is wrong. Today is about the last five minutes of his life. Which were tragic, traumatic, and the worst thing that can happen to a child.
"Our legal system has given us some justice today but David (Ben’s father) and I will never have true justice," she added. "True justice would be our 15-year-old healthy and standing next to us right now. But Ben will never be 15. He will be 6 forever."
In a news conference held in Fairfield County, Josh Koskoff, an attorney for the families, said that his team “established what was clearly true ... the immunity protecting the gun industry is not bulletproof.
“We hope they realize they have skin in the game, instead of blaming literally everybody else.”
The $73 million settlement is all of the available coverage that Remington’s insurers could pay, according to the families’ attorneys.
They previously approached them with a $33 million settlement that was ultimately denied, "because they wanted to ensure they had obtained enough documents and taken enough depositions to prove Remington's misconduct,” and “to ensure the case's message to the insurance industry was clear.”
In 2020, Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection for the second time in approximately two years.
“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.”
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