Connecticut – -(AmmoLand.com)- Attorneys for the now-defunct Remington have reportedly subpoenaed the records of five children and four adults who were killed by Adam Lanza at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Conn in December 2012.
Nine families filed the lawsuit against Remington, and in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the case to move forward.
There may be just one problem for the continuing narrative of this case. As noted last week by the CT Post, “Remington no longer exists as a company.”
Plaintiffs’ lead attorney Josh Koskoff told the newspaper, “We have no explanation for why Remington subpoenaed the Newtown Public School District to obtain the kindergarten and first-grade academic, attendance and disciplinary records of these five schoolchildren.”
He reportedly also stated in a motion by the families to have the subpoenaed records sealed that “Remington’s counsel recently conceded: ‘Remington no longer has a proprietary interest in those documents because Remington no longer exists.’ Counsel is right that Remington is no longer entitled to claim confidentiality for documents it has produced or will produce.”
The company that was Remington has been dissolved in bankruptcy court, as reported by the Danbury News Times, which added, “four insurance companies have taken over the former company’s defense.”
So, when it is reported “Remington” has made an effort to settle the case, that is apparently not accurate.
It was not Remington, for example, that earlier this summer offered a $3.6 million settlement to each of the nine families involved in the lawsuit, but two of the four insurance companies, the story explained.
Adding even more strangeness to the case, CT Post also reported that just days prior to the settlement offer, “Remington raised eyebrows when it was accused of handing over 18,000 ‘random cartoons’ and 15,000 irrelevant pictures of people go-karting and dirt-biking as part of its pretrial data requested by the families.”
The records request, while it may seem unusual, apparently is “routine,” according to TIME. Quoting an unidentified “legal source,” TIME explained, “that it is routine in wrongful death lawsuits for the defense team to subpoena education and medical records to determine damages.”
However, attorney Koskoff contends the records “would not help” in estimating any damages. Instead, he insisted to TIME that the school records “cannot possibly excuse Remington’s egregious marketing conduct.”
But there is yet another concern about where this case might go, and that would be in the realm of conspiracy theories, specifically that the Sandy Hook incident was a hoax.
Four defamation lawsuits were filed against Alex Jones and his InfoWars following assertions that the school shooting was a hoax. Jones has been battling those legal actions, according to the Austin American-Statesman. On Sept. 1, the newspaper reported that the parents of two Sandy Hook victims were asking for a default judgment against Jones. In December 2019, a judge in Texas ordered Jones to pay $100,000 for “intentionally” disregarding an order “to provide witnesses to attorneys representing a Sandy Hook father” who brought a lawsuit in Austin, while other actions were filed in Connecticut. At the time, District Judge Scott Jenkins also denied Jones’ motion to dismiss that lawsuit, according to the Associated Press.
Attorneys for Jones have contended his remarks were protected by the First Amendment.
The problem with the Jones case stems from the “dump” of thousands of pages of documents sought in pretrial discovery, the newspaper explained. District Judge Maya Guerra Gamble told attorneys “she will issue…rulings on the default judgment and contempt of court ‘as quickly as I can.’”
While many believe the case against Remington should never have gone this far because of the federal Protection in Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) passed during the George W. Bush administration—an argument that got the nod from a Connecticut Superior Court in 2016—three years later, the state Supreme Court said the plaintiffs could pursue the lawsuit under a state statute called the Unfair Trade Practices Act. That allows legal actions based on how products are marketed. The U.S. Supreme Court declined to review the case in 2019, sending it back to the lower court for trial, the CT Post story recalled.
Mass shooter Lanza murdered his mother in December 2012 and took her legally-purchased guns to the elementary school. Twenty youngsters and six adults were killed before Lanza took his own life, apparently as police cars approached the school.
The incident not only became a gun control cause to the Obama administration, but it also resulted in a national movement to beef up security at public schools, with either off-duty police or the assignment of officers or sheriffs’ deputies as school resources officers. An offshoot of this was the effort to arm volunteer teachers or school staff to provide some defense while waiting for law enforcement to respond to an emergency.
About Dave Workman
Dave Workman is a senior editor at TheGunMag.com and Liberty Park Press, author of multiple books on the Right to Keep & Bear Arms, and formerly an NRA-certified firearms instructor.
