Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Crash Courts, a podcast about business, political, and
social disruption and what we can learn from it. I'm
Tim O'Brien. Today's crash course Sandy Hook and a Reckoning
for gun Makers. Early in twenty twenty two, a multi
year ordeal ended for the families of nine victims killed
in the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut.
(00:24):
Ten years before, one of the country's biggest gun makers,
Remington Arms, the manufacturer of the assault weapon used in
the murders, agreed to pay seventy three million dollars to
settle a lawsuit the families filed against it. It was
a landmark victory that opened a gap in the formidable
legal and financial armour that had long allowed gun makers
(00:45):
to avoid accountability for gun deaths. The Remington settlement also
offered a road map. If federal and state legislators weren't
going to do something about gun violence, well then maybe
the courts could. And maybe the courts could if someone
came along who was shrewd enough to figure out where
gun makers legal vulnerabilities resided. My guest today is Josh Coskoff,
(01:09):
the attorney who represented the Sandy Hook families. He's also
part of a team of lawyers representing sixteen victims and
their parents who suffered because of the shooting in Uvalde,
Texas in twenty twenty two. The gun used in that
school massacre was made by a small Georgia gun manufacturer,
Daniel Defense. Josh, Welcome to cross Course.
Speaker 2 (01:31):
Thank you very much. Tim.
Speaker 1 (01:33):
Let's start with a little bit of context before we
get into the meat of the case. Sure, how come
it's taken so long for gun makers to be held
accountable in a court of law? Give us some history
and context around that.
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Sure, And it's probably important for your listeners to understand
that I could not have begun to answer this question
ten years ago, since I didn't know anything about guns
or gun litigation. But over the last ten years I've
accumulated quite a bit of information that I never had previously.
The basic problem with getting to gun manufactures has been
(02:07):
in the age of the mass shooting, at least has
been the passage of a gun quote unquote immunity or
shield law called the Protection of Lawful Commerce in ARMSAC
and that occurred in two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Shorthand for that is PLACA. If we prefer to right.
Speaker 2 (02:23):
Placae placa, like the stuff that gets stuck in your teeth,
that sour.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
Second, the legal system, Yeah, it.
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Comes up the works for sure. And you know that
sort of coincided to him with the advent of the
mass shootings of what we're seeing today. You know, when
I was growing up, there were no real mass shootings
of the nature that happened seemingly with increasing velocity as
time goes on. But you know, it was unheard of
really back when I was growing up. And so the
(02:50):
passage of this law really coincided with sort of the
dawn of a new age of mass shootings. Well, the
momentum really occurred ten years before, in nineteen ninety four,
when the assault weapons ban was passed under Clinton with
a great help from former President Reagan, who was very
concerned about the proliferation of assault rifles on our streets
(03:11):
and really got that bill over the finish line. That
bill was a little bit was flawed in my view,
and imperfect, but it was some momentum towards sanity. I
would say that lapsed tim in two thousand and four,
and then in two thousand and four there was no
appetite to renew the law. It had a ten year
sunset provision, and Congress had flipped and the Iraq War
(03:34):
was going on, and so we were on a war footing,
and I think that there was just no political or
even public appetite for renewing the assault weapons ban at
that time. People say it wasn't successful, but the truth is, well,
we don't really know. You don't know what's been prevented
from a law. But what we can say is that
there were no rampant mass shootings occurring on a practically
(03:57):
daily basis in America at the time. So that's some
evidence that it was working. And without that rampant evidence,
you know, people get a feeling of immune to the threat.
Then you take away the protection and then the threat reoccurs.
Speaker 1 (04:11):
So in that environment, in two thousand and five, Placa
is passed. Yeah, what did Placa do.
Speaker 2 (04:18):
What Placa did was it put a stop to all
pending lawsuits brought by cities that were dealing with daily crime,
crime caused by handgun use and abuse and scrupulous gun
dealers and gun trafficking and things like that. Congress basically
said miss Palis can no longer sue people can no
longer sue for harm or death caused by gun violence
(04:42):
unless you meet these certain criteria which are very strict.
So they had some exceptions, but most of the exceptions
to the so called immunity were exceptions in name only.
There were a couple of exceptions that had some teeth
to them, though, and those were sort of unexplored at
the time of our Sandy Hook case.
Speaker 1 (04:59):
Let's get to the exceptions later, because you're the one
who actually ended up exploiting some of the exceptions. But
while we're talking about PLACA and the enactment of PLACA,
it's an interesting thing to me because basically, you have
an entire industry that is getting legal protection from being
held liable for the consequences of social fallout and deaths
(05:21):
in this case related to the products they're selling in
the United States, and it's very rare, almost i would
say non existent, for an industry in the United States
to get that kind of protection. Big Tobacco built a
motor around itself that was eventually breached, but they were
never specifically guarded from liability lawsuits and the way the
(05:41):
gun industry was, and few industries are. And I wanted
you to sort of explain why you think the gun
industry got that special dispensation.
Speaker 2 (05:52):
Well, I think that the perception of the gun industry
is that it's influential and leads to political success. If
you make the gun industry happy, you make their rank
and file happy, and you win elections. I just think
that it's that simple.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
It's just it's a reflection of the incredible political power
it wheels as an industry it is.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
And you know, I think it's important to understand, like
with the gun industry, there's perception and reality. The gun
industry is actually really small industry, and so it was
not just concerned about losing lawsuits and having to pay
for all the harm it caused. It was also just
concerned about having to defend them and the costs of defense.
It's a paltry industry, it really is.
Speaker 1 (06:36):
One other contextual thing I wanted to explore with you
was the idea of mass shootings and a definition of
a mass shooting. It's open to interpretation, but one working
definition says a mass shooting involves four victims killed by
a firearm in a public space, and some studies have
indicated that about one third of the world the entire
world's public mass shootings between nineteen sixty six and twenty
(06:59):
twelve occurred in the US alone, and it got me thinking,
in the context of the Sandy Hook case, that every
time during those many decades there was a mass shooting,
victims had no recourse really at all, like none at all.
How do you see that? You know, what was that
world before Sandy Hook and where are we now?
Speaker 2 (07:19):
Well, I think you have to think about as the
world before the immunity first, and then the world between
the immunity and the Sandy Hook shooting and in pre
two thousand and five America. First of all, I haven't
seen that study, but I would guess that there's a
disproportionate amount of those shootings occurred later as time went on.
But I will say that there are natural hurdles within
(07:41):
the existing law forget about the immunity, that make it
challenging to sue any industry for starters, but more specifically
to what we're talking about the gun industry, because typically
people are harmed or injured or killed by guns through
the intermediate actions of another actor, shooter or a negligent
(08:02):
actor somebody who just sort of recklessly is shooting a
firearm or drops a fire and whatever, So there's usually
an intervening actor, and whenever there's an intervening actor in
a legal case, it adds a level of complexity because
you have to reach a third party, so to speak.
So there were natural impediments to suing gun manufacturer. So
you ask where were all the lawsuits? First of all,
(08:23):
there were some, but typically they were lawsuits brought under
conventional theories of products liability, where guns were accidentally discharging
or had a defective trigger lock or things like that.
Handguns is an exception because handguns were used primarily for
most of the deaths in crime and suicides for that matter.
But it's just there are natural hurdles to overcome to
(08:46):
sue a gun industry, irrespective of the immunity, and so
I don't think that it would have been easy for
us to bring our lawsuit even without PLACA. I think
it was extra hard with PLACA, but it still would
have had to overcome natural legal hurdles.
Speaker 1 (09:02):
You mentioned earlier you had never tried a gun case
before coming into contact around the Sandy Hook families. How
did you first intersect with the Sandy Hook families and
then decide to sue Remington tell me a little bit
about that progression.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
Yeah, I mean we're talking about progression that took place
over two years, the decision to sue and how to sue.
But it was really tim a real chance encounter. I
was getting a ride to the airport about a week
after the shooting by a guy who had a friend
whose daughter was killed at Sandy Hook. And you know,
you asked me what I did for a living. And
this is always a question I dread because when you're
(09:39):
a lawyer and a person asks you what you do,
you don't know what's going to come next. After you
tell them you're a lawyer. You could be dragged into
any kind of problem that runs the gamut. You know,
in this case, somebody who lost their daughter at a
shooting at an elementary school. So it was a really
it was not a typical discussion. And of course, in
(10:01):
the aftermath of Sandy Hook, I'm about twenty minutes from
Sandy Hook and I had young kids at the time,
so this had already reached me and grabbed me. And
I was thinking, I would love to just help these
people do whatever I can. I wasn't even thinking about
a lossit I was just thinking about could we help
them do the probate, Could we help them manage the press,
could we help them distribute this funds, you know, get
(10:22):
people off their back, those kinds of things.
Speaker 1 (10:24):
So you rang up some of the family members or
began finding family members you could speak to.
Speaker 2 (10:29):
Yeah, I mean they sort of you know, I didn't
pursue the family members, that's not how it works here
in Connecticut. But this guy asked me if he could
give his friend my number, and his friend contacted me.
It turned out to be the father of actually one
of the adult victims, Victoria Sota, who was a first
grade classroom And you know, from there, I think because
the families talked and they were in communication, the word
(10:51):
got out that, hey, there's this lawyer who's just ignorant
or ignorant enough, but you know, willing to naive enough,
naive enough there you go to look into our case
and help us. And they were right about that.
Speaker 1 (11:06):
And so you had to sort of gain their trust,
talk strategically about the goals, and over time a little
team sort of coalesced around us. Is that how it happened.
Speaker 2 (11:16):
Yeah, I mean the people that were hard to convince
were my colleagues here at the office. The families had
a lot going on, and it was my promise to
them that I would do all the work and that
I would not add aggravation to their lives, and that
they should go about their lives and pretend there's nothing
going on here. In part, I was very leery about
over promising and leading more disappointment to these families who
(11:39):
had just been shattered by this horrific loss. So it
was not a case where you have a lot of
interaction with the families in terms of what's going on.
You want to be there for them emotionally, but the
explanation was really occurring within the confines of our office.
I had assembled a very small team here, principally a
fellow we call her, out of yl law school named
(12:01):
Katie messner Age, and Katie and I sort of were
a two man crew there for about two years, and
we learned everything we could about the law and everything
we could about guns. We shot guns, we met with cops,
we ran the gamut. We really needed to know that
if we had to sit down with the families and
tell them there was no case, that we did everything
we could before reaching that conclusion.
Speaker 1 (12:23):
Well, now that we have some of this background. I
want to take a brief break to hear from one
of our sponsors, and then we'll be right back to
talk about the legal strategy then deployed to take on Remington.
We're back with Josh Koskoff, the attorney who successfully sued
Remington for its role in the twenty twelve Sandy Hook
School shootings. Josh, let's talk tactics Earlier. You told me
(12:48):
about how you met some of the Sandy Hook families
and then decided to go to court. Start at the beginning.
When did you first file against Remington? And did you
know what your strategy was going to be from the
get go.
Speaker 2 (12:59):
Yeah, Well, well, it took us two years to build
the case and to get to a point where we
narrowed down our legal strategies, and we filed effectively on
the eve of this second anniversary. In Connecticut, you have
two years to file in a wrongful death case, two
years from the day to death. So we brought it
up to the wire. And I thought that was important
because when we filed, we wanted to make sure that
(13:22):
we had assembled the most information and had thought about
this the most carefully, and had sort of trouble, shot
our theories and really to take the time. And so
that's what we did and we got the lawsuit in
under the wire. After that, I mean, the motions started
to come. There was one motion after another to try
(13:44):
to derail the case. And that motion practice really ate
up about five years of time. You know. One it
was removing it to federal court. It was trying to
get it back to state court. It was filing the
motions to dismiss our case. It was going up to
the Connecticuts Supreme Court, and then having to deal with
the other side's petitioned to the United States Supreme Court.
Speaker 1 (14:05):
Well, and what you call motion practice in the legal
field is basically like jiu jitsu, right. It's the person
that you're suing is finding every possible way to change
the venue, slow things down, get actions dismissed, get file
counter charges against you, or whatever it might be in
(14:25):
their responses, and on and on and on. So motion
practice is a polite, legalistic way of sort of saying
hand to hand combat.
Speaker 2 (14:33):
Right, yeah, or I would say shit storm, you know,
and you know this shit storm playbook, if you will,
was developed by other industries have unleashed the same sequential playbook.
So I wasn't totally shocked. But it's what big influential
industry does to try to squash lawsuits and to make
it really difficult, if not impossible, for the little guy
(14:56):
to take them on for their wrongdoing.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
But had you talked to them before you filed, Like,
had you thought about just sort of talking reason to
them and encouraging them to find a settlement or do
you right by the families to persuade them from going
to court altogether? Was that not ever going to be
a route to go?
Speaker 2 (15:14):
Well, I'm laughing because I'm thinking, boy, I was really
naive when I filed this case. But I don't think
tim I was that nive that Yeah, yeah, I didn't
think that if I picked up the phone and talked
to the CEO of Remington that he would all of
a sudden fall on the sword and.
Speaker 1 (15:30):
I should just pay them a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (15:32):
Yes, Oh what's your name again? Oh? Yeah, I think yeah,
sounds good to me, you know. But in a more
serious note, the gun industry is very good at closing ranks.
They are a very petty with each other, so they
will sue each other over the drop of a hat.
In terms of a trademark infringement, since they're all selling,
you know, the same things, they all work the same,
and they look the same under the hood and under
(15:53):
the paint. They will see each other at the drop
of a hat. But when it comes to closing ranks
and yielding or giving an inch, the gun industry is
right there. That's the NRA's playbook, you know, that's the
National Sports Shooting Foundation's playbook, or the NSSF, which is
the gun industry's marketing arm. You know, they really have
(16:13):
They move in lockstep when it comes to lawsuits, and
it's a give no quarter policy.
Speaker 1 (16:19):
And were you dealing with in house council, outside council,
both outside council.
Speaker 2 (16:25):
There aren't a lot of people who work in house
at gun companies. That's one of the things we found out.
It was really sobering, actually, is that I think Remington,
which was, by the time we brought the lawsuit, the
largest gun conglomerate effectively it had ever been built. It
wasn't a brand Remington, it was a conglomerate, and they
had one lawyer effectively running the show. Which shows you
(16:48):
that all that crying about how many gun laws there
are by the gun industry. Yeah, maybe there's a lot numerically,
but they don't put a lot of pressure on the
industry such that, you know, a billion dollar revenue a year.
Conglomerate like Remington was can have a staff of all
of one full time lawyer.
Speaker 1 (17:07):
So did you feel outmatched? You know, as you mentioned earlier,
you'd never litigated a gun case before. Did you feel
nervous or overwhelmed by any of this?
Speaker 2 (17:17):
No. I. First of all, by the time we filed
the lawsuit, I was convinced we had a winner. And
that's probably a subject for another podcast, but.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
I podcast about why does Josh Costcoff have such conviction
about certain things in the face of possible doom in gloom?
Speaker 2 (17:33):
Yeah, well, I'm not sure I would be comfortable with
signing my name to that one. But anyway, by the
time we filed the lawsuit, I was convinced we had
a strong case, and I knew that we would out
lawyer then because we are in the soil of bringing
hard cases in all types of circumstances, and I'm basically
cut my teeth as a medical malpractice lawyer, and you know,
(17:54):
medicine and is very fuzzy and you have to make inferences,
and it's one hundred percent gray air. So I was
used to making these connections, these causal relationships between a
wrongdoing and a result. So I felt comfortable with the
narrative that we were going to tell. I thought it
was powerful and it was interesting because it came about
very naturally since I didn't know anything about guns or
(18:16):
gun laws. I was just receiving information and I was
collaborating with my team here. You know, we would talk
about and we say, see, this really doesn't make any sense,
and why is it that these weapons are marketed to
civilians when they were made for the military, and in
the military you can't get your hands on one of
these things until you've trained for one hundred hours. It
was just a series of connections. So I thought we
(18:38):
had certainly had the just case, We certainly had the
right side of the case, and we had a story
that really resonated. And the other thing is that because
they never get to trial. I wasn't worried at all
about getting to trial against lawyers who have no experience.
I know what it's like to have no experience trying cases.
It's terrible. You go in there and you get humiliated.
(19:00):
I got humiliated for the first ten years I practiced law,
and I still get you routinely humiliated.
Speaker 1 (19:05):
It's hard, well, and this was a long case. How
did you fund this case? It lasted eight years twenty
fourteen to twenty twenty two. That's a long time to
wait for justice and a paycheck, isn't it.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, I mean nobody. We were under no illusions this
was gonna cost the firm a fair amount of money.
But it was a case we could not in good
conscience turn down, especially after we had developed these theories.
So we thought we would, you know, be an investment
of a certain amount of money, but it mostly would
be an investment of time. And so really, well, we
(19:37):
spent a small fortune. I'm sure what we really spent
was thousands and thousands of hours of time, and I
always thought that was time well spent. And I wouldn't
have regretted any of this had we gone down. My
wife close to the even when we filed the case.
Apparently I was getting cold feet despite what I'm telling you,
because I think my wife said, well, you were looking
(19:59):
for a way me to talk you out of it,
and I'm like, here she goes with revisionist history. But
she said that she asked me a question. She said,
if I'm on my deathbed, would I rather look back
and say, I'm glad we didn't take that case, or
I'm glad we took that case even though we lost.
And I woke up the next morning and I said,
I knew exactly what we had to do.
Speaker 1 (20:20):
See, the wives always knew. They always say.
Speaker 2 (20:23):
No, not always but because she might be listening to
this podcast, but most of the time.
Speaker 1 (20:27):
And how would you describe the state of mind of
the families? There were twenty six victims. Families representing nine
of those victims ended up with you in your suit.
Were some too traumatized? Do you want to take this on?
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Yeah? I mean you have to go back ten years,
and we're staring into like a dark space, like a
tunnel that's never been explored. And unlike other cases that
have been tried in true cases, car accidents, airplane crashes,
things that sort of shatter people's lives out of nowhere,
this is uncharted terror. So it's really hard to make
(21:02):
a fully strong recommendation to families that you're talking to
at this stage. I was very clear that the odds
were still stacked against us as strongly as I felt
about the case, and I didn't know what the repercussions
would be for the families. You know, whenever you take
on the gun industry, even if it's for something that
I think gun owners would also find revolting. Like corporate read,
(21:26):
you do tend to attract people who are hostile. So
there was a part of it that because the perspective
payoff of being successful was daunting and the unknown was
daunting in a bad way, it was hard to make
a strong recommendation. A lot of people decided they didn't
want to do it because of that, and I didn't
want anybody that was sheepish about it to feel pressure
(21:48):
to be part of the case. And then there were
people just didn't believe in ensuing a gun industry. You know,
just because you're a parent of a child that was
shot in a mass shooting doesn't make you politically aligned
with all the other parents. So there was a lot
of factors.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
All Right, we're going to pick up with that again
in a minute. I'm going to take another brief break,
Josh to hear from a sponsor, and then we'll be
right back. We're back with Josh Coskoff, the attorney who
represented Sandy Hook families who sued Remington. Josh, take me
through the pivotal moments in the court case, say, the
(22:24):
three or four moments in the case that for your
definitive or set the course for the outcome, including I
think your decision to essentially go after them for their
marketing practices.
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Well. Sure, one of the core pivots occurred early on,
actually before we filed, when I got an answer to
the biggest hurdle that I thought we had, which is
drawing a connection between the wrongdoing of this conglomerate, this
gun conglomerate, and the shooting itself. The marketing itself was
so awful that if I hold it up and showed
(22:59):
it to you, basically anybody, you would say, that's just irresponsible, reckless, sick.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
And a lot of that started interrupt Josh. But a
lot of that marketing sort of hinged on appealing to
the machismo and insecurities of young male gun buyers, right like,
you will be a real man if you have this
high powered weapon in your hands, right Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I mean I described the marketing as really a courtship
and the suitor was the Gun conglomerate, and they were
trying to court these young kids because the market had
become flooded with competition. And so what was known at
the time is freedom Group Conglomerate had to do was
they had to expand the market because they made a
big bet on AR fifteens, so they had to start
(23:42):
pushing AR fifteens on an increasingly younger demographic of user,
and in doing so, younger demographic in today's America or
millennials at the time were not interested in hunting, so
they weren't going to go out and buy a hunting rifle.
But what they liked were, you know, military video games,
and so they used video games and imagery of tactical gear,
(24:04):
the gear surrounding it to really promote a loan gunman
sort of violent manliness, if you will, in the possession
and use of an AR fifteen. And the iconic ad
that people saw shortly after the shooting, at least it
said your man card has been reissued with a picture
of an AR fifteen. Very simple, very bold, very salacious marketing.
(24:27):
So I was pretty clear that you know, in front
of a Kinnecticut jury, they weren't going to find that
to be reasonable marketing. And another thing that was important
was that Freedom Group was trying to go public back
in twenty ten, and they issued a report to the
SEC where they extolled the virtues of the younger demographic
(24:49):
of user that can accessorize effectively the AIRAR fifteen. So
they saw this market as very promising for their bottom
line trying to go pug So I thought that was
also like a sick component to this whole thing, that
it was purely profit driven. This wasn't driven by some
ideal Second Amendment thing, or these guys could have cared
(25:10):
less about the Second Amendment.
Speaker 1 (25:12):
And in the state of Connecticut, there wasn't opening legally
to take a gun maker to court if they either
had a defective product or they were making false claims
for their product. Right or am I oversimplifying?
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I mean, are you doing way better than I would
have done interviewing me. It's very similar the conceit was
of our case. You could sue for unethical, immoral, or
unscrupulous marketing. And so what they were doing I wouldn't
necessarily describe it as false advertising, but it was outrageous
conduct in advertising. And marketing, and in every state is
(25:47):
concerned about corporate wrongdoing to an extent in their way
they do business. Connecticut had a bigger opening than many
and so that gave us the route through this immunity.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
Because PLAQUE is a federal law. LACO was federal law, right,
so finding a state an opening through state law gave
you a leg up.
Speaker 2 (26:05):
Yeah, and PLACA on its own terms. And this is
the one thing about the PLACA immunity. You should know
that the exception that has the most purchase or teeth
is called the predicate exception. And this is an exception
that says that you can still sue a gun manufacturer
or seller that engages in conduct that violates a state
or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms.
(26:29):
So you can still sue where they violate a state
or federal statute applicable to the sale or marketing of firearms.
What does that mean? The way I put it is
that Congress was willing to do the biding of the
gun industry in twenty oh five, but they weren't willing
to go the full distance. They weren't willing to immunize
the gun industry from engaging in unlawful conduct. So they
(26:51):
carved out this exception for unlawful conduct in the sale
or marketing that's applicable to the saler marketing of fire arm.
So bottom line, where a gun company breaks a state
or federal law applicable to the sale of marketing with firearm,
you can bring a lawsuit against them. And that's what
we said that Connecticut's unfair trade practice marketing statute was.
Speaker 1 (27:15):
Did you think you were going to reach a settlement?
Speaker 2 (27:18):
No? I didn't. I didn't think this industry would ever settle,
and I don't think they would have settled, but it
had taken so many years, and during this time they
went bankrupt not once, but twice during our case. So
what that did was then it left an insurance tower
that was responsible. So just because an insured goes bankrupt
(27:41):
doesn't mean that the litigation ends because they're solvent. Insurance
companies still carry the burden of their obligations. They're not bankrupt.
So we had four insurance companies now defending the case. Effectively.
They were represented by very smart lawyers, and initially they thought,
I think they could beat us, but the more discovery
(28:01):
and depositions that we did. I think they realized that
we had a strong case and agreed with us effectively
that we had a strong case that was going to
expose them to not just seventy three million, but probably
over a billion dollars worth of harm. But the families
were steadfast. They were not going to take money and
(28:21):
go away. The only thing that they would agreed to
settle for would be all the available money, but more importantly,
the ability to use and disclose the documents that we
obtained during discovery to the American people. That was the
sine quan own of the settlement. And when the other
(28:42):
side expressed a willingness to do that, even though I
had sort of thought all along that the best place
to have this argument and to expose this industry would
be in a trial, people were just saying, Josh, you
got to fold it up. You can't get a better
deal than this.
Speaker 1 (28:58):
So that's why did the fact that you know, Remington
went bankrupt twice during the course of your litigation, and
ultimately it was the insurers that paid, not Remington, Did
that take any teeth or satisfaction out of the settlement
for you?
Speaker 2 (29:15):
No, I think a settlement often takes some satisfaction away
because it's a settlement. This one was unique, though, because
we started a place where all the so called experts
said we didn't have a chance. And I might have
said that if I were looking from the outside end.
We had accomplished so much and won so many important victories. Also,
you never get a settlement tim where you are able
(29:37):
to continue to talk about the case or disclose documents
on something so important. And I thought, I can't do
better in court, because if we try the case and
we win it, it's going to get appealed. It's going
to be another decade, And so I thought the settlement
was the right time. The fact that it was for
insurance comings to me. At first. I would have liked
(29:58):
the gun conglomerate to fall on its knees and beg
for forgiveness and explain that they were going to change
their ways. But like we talked about before, you know,
this is an industry that just puts its head in
the sand. They see no relationship whatsoever to what they're
doing and what all of us are experiencing and seeing
every day in America, and take no responsibility for it.
(30:21):
So it was too naive a thought, but the fact
that these four insurance companies that were in the business
of previously underwriting the gun industry all looked at this
and said, yeah, we are in trouble financially on this.
I took great satisfaction from that, because the gun industry
is not going to change, but those that underwrite the industry,
(30:43):
the arteries that support it. It has to become economically
risky for corporate America to subsidize this industry, even with
one dollar, And I thought that on that score, we
achieved as much as we could possibly do.
Speaker 1 (30:57):
Did it provide closure for the families too?
Speaker 2 (31:00):
I thought it provided a moment of sunshine for the families.
As a way I described it, I can't speak for
the families because I didn't lose a child in the
first grade shooting. You know, that's just an unimaginable loss.
And I don't know. I'm not sure I believe of
the possibility of closure from that in that way, but
I will say that these families had met with such
recurring disappointment, frustration, and this feeling of doesn't anybody recognize
(31:27):
our side? Doesn't and we recognize what we lost, don't
people understand? This could happen to them. I think for
at least those moments after we reached the settlement, there
was a moment of reassurance and sunshine, and I think
it's lasted, and I hope it lasts them and provides
some sunshine as they go on with their lives for
the rest of their lives.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
So now you're representing more than a dozen victims of
the Valdi shooting and their parents. What traits does that
litigation share or not share with the Sandy Hook case.
Speaker 2 (31:58):
Well, on the fact, it's not that complicated. I mean, factually,
you have a young shooter grew up in the age
of first person shooter games and this push by gun
manufacturers to arm a younger and younger male consumer or
what they call an end user. And you have a
kid who was himself money would have said, was a
(32:20):
victim of adolescence and marginalization, a poor kid, a kid
who had been abused as a child, with a stutter,
and a perfect target for the message that was being
sent in that case by Daniel Defense. And I do
think Daniel Defense's marketing takes bush Master and multiplies it.
Speaker 1 (32:41):
Bush Master was the assault weapon used in the Sandy Hook.
Speaker 2 (32:44):
And the Sandy Hook shooting. Yeah, and you know, so
if anybody was going to get the message being sent
by Daniel Offense, it was going to be the shooter.
And you know they had accomplices, They had Instagram. Dana
Defense did what Bushmaster did in the in ye Olden
Days of two thousand and nine, which is they manipulated
social media and used social media to sort of promote
(33:06):
their weaponry in a way that would have reached this
very marginalized kid who then perpetrated this unthinkable act much
like the Sandy Hook shooter did. It's strikingly similar and
to some extent, we've seen this story before. When you
saw Uvalde and your listener saw and heard about Uvalde,
I'm sure you thought about Sandy Hook, and I'm sure
(33:27):
you thought about Parkland, and I'm sure you thought about
every shooting virtually that we see these days. You probably
guessed it was a young kid that was carrying out
the shooting at the school, and that's always the case.
So factually it is very very similar to even more extreme,
I would say, because the kid was eighteen and two
or three days when he acquired the weapon, which means
(33:49):
that he had been being courted and promoted that weapon
for years, right, Because it's a twenty five hundred dollars
piece of metal. He had to work his way up
to save up for it. So there's no doubt that
they were marketing to this kid when he was a
young teen, and perhaps even before then. So it played
out factually the same way our case was brought under
(34:09):
Connecticut state law. Texas has much different laws, not surprisingly,
and so they have additional.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
Which has been the scene of serial school in public
shootings over the last few years.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Yeah, I mean, we've seen several high profile mass shootings,
but the law that applies to marketing is different. I mean,
there's some laws that are the same, but you have
to take your facts and you have to let the
facts guide you in a direction, and then you have
to test it against existing law and try different pathways.
It's really a process of exploration. So that's what we're
in right now with Uvalde.
Speaker 1 (34:44):
Do you think that other gun makers, the big ones
like Storm, Ruger and Smith and Wesson, have been put
unnoticed by the Sandy Hook settlement or are they shrugging
it off.
Speaker 2 (34:55):
Well, they appear to be shrugging it off, to be honest,
I mean, it's hard to know. The answer is a tarch.
Certainly outwardly they're shrugging it off. In fact, the day
the announcement of the settlement at Sandy Hook, the marketing
arm of the industry, the NSSF, came out with a
statement basically saying, we're about to put our head in
the sand and here we go. You know you were
going to lose the case. And this wasn't settled by us,
(35:15):
it was settled by insurance companies, and basically we're not
going to change. And certainly some of the marketing you
continue to see doesn't seem to have learned the lesson.
It's a classic choice between profit and responsibility. And to
compete in this ever competitive market for those last few
consumers who might want an AR fifteen and haven't been
(35:37):
tapped for their money, they apparently believe they have to
be more extreme. And it makes sense, right. The more
extreme and outlandish the promotion, the more aggressive it is,
the more shocking it is, the more likely they can
distinguish themselves from their competitors. That's what we saw with
Bushmaster when they revitalized this gun and brought in competition
(35:59):
that all of a sudden became a threat to their
world dominance. They try to out extreme them, and you know,
you still have this competition for I think, what's increasingly
smaller potential consumers that will want to purchase an AAR
fifteen that haven't already.
Speaker 1 (36:16):
You've touched on some of these things, and maybe you've
actually already answered the question. But I always want to
conclude by asking people what they've learned when they're part
of a major collision like this, And what do you
know now about suing gun makers that you didn't know
before suing Remington?
Speaker 2 (36:33):
Well, I mean the first thing that I know now
is that the perception of the gun makers being above
the law is just that. I mean, it's very very
hard to sue gun makers. However, it's also very very
hard to sue pharmaceutical companies. It's very hard to sue
oil companies, it's very hard to sue neurosurgeons. Lots of
lawsuits against powerful interests or people are challenging. So that's
(36:57):
something I've learned and I hopefully people get out of this.
Another thing I've learned, of course, again is the vulnerability
of this industry. It's a small industry, it's a vulnerable industry.
It won't take many of these lawsuits to get them
to change their ways, because they're going to have to.
And I've also learned that this industry can't exist without
(37:19):
insurance companies willing to ensure them, without banks willing to
loan the money, without delivery companies willing to ship their
freaking products. Like AR Fifteen's right, Corporate America has a
role to play. If Corporate America and the people that
work in Corporate America are sick and tired of their
kids having to go through school shootings, drills, and anxiety
(37:42):
of getting shot, then guess what they can play a
role in helping solve this problem. So those things are
things that I've learned.
Speaker 1 (37:50):
Josh, the clock has on its course and we're out
of time. Thanks for joining us.
Speaker 2 (37:55):
Thank you, Tim.
Speaker 1 (37:56):
Josh Costcoff is an attorney with cost COF and Beater
in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Here at crash Course, we believe the
collisions can be messy, impressive, challenging, surprising, and always instructive.
In today's crash Course, I learned that if legislatures aren't
going to do something about guns, maybe the court system will,
(38:17):
especially if a lot of Moneies evolved. What did you learn?
We'd love to hear from you. You can tweet at
the Bloomberg Opinion handle at Opinion or me at Tim
O'Brien using the hashtag Bloomberg Crash Course. You can also
subscribe to our show wherever you're listening right now and
leave us a review. It helps more people find the show.
(38:37):
This episode was produced by the indispensable Anamasarakas, the indispensable
Moses On Dam and Me. Our supervising producer is Magnus Henrickson,
and we had editing help from Sage Bauman, Katie Boyce,
Jeff Grocott, Mike Nize, and Christine Vanden Bilart. Blake Maples says.
Our sound engineering and our original theme song was composed
(38:58):
by Luis Gara Tim O'Brien. We'll be back next week
with another Crash Course.
Speaker 2 (39:10):
M