Las Vegas Shooting Victims Sued by MGM Resorts

Family members and survivors of the mass shooting in Las Vegas say they find it hard to believe that MGM Resorts has filed a lawsuit against them. 

The company says they are not seeking money in the lawsuits filed in at least seven states over the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history. Instead, the company is hoping that federal courts will declare they are not liable to survivors of slain victims under a federal law enacted shortly after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. 

One man whose mother was killed during the mass shooting, says he's struggling with how the lawsuit filed by MGM makes sense.

"I gotta live, without the most important person in my life and you're going to try to sue me for that? And you're going to sue my grandparents? When they weren't even there?" Corey Shipp said at a news conference in Orange County this morning. 

Shipp says he lost track of his mother at the concert and had to wait for nearly 36 hours until he found out she had been killed. 

The lawsuit argues that the Oct. 1 mass shooting qualifies the company for protection under the Support Anti-terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act of 2002 because the incident 1) qualified as an act of terror and 2) the company used federally certified security services at the venue where more than 22,000 people were gathered when the shooting began. 

MGM's lawsuit is targeting those victims who have sued the company and voluntarily dismissed their claims, or have threatened to sue after a gunman opened fire on the crowd of country music fans on Oct 1. 

Authorities say Stephen Paddock killed 58 people and injured hundreds more when he used a high-powered rifle to shoot more than 1,100 rounds at the concertgoers gathered below him from the windows of his hotel suite on the 32nd floor of the nearby Mandalay Bay hotel. 

Paddock was found dead in his hotel room an hour after the shooting ended from a self-inflicted gunshot wound. 

Photo: Getty Images