Shooting settlement

People visit a memorial Thursday for the 58 victims of the 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas. MGM Resorts International, which owns the hotel from which the gunman fired on the crowd below, has agreed to pay up to $800 million to settle lawsuits related to the shooting.

MGM Resorts International has agreed to pay up to $800 million to settle lawsuits from victims of the October 2017 mass shooting in Las Vegas that left 58 people dead and hundreds of others injured.

The killer, Stephen Paddock, holed up inside his room on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay hotel, which MGM owns, and then fired into the crowd at a country-music festival below.

One of the lawyers for the victims, Robert Eglet, said Thursday that the settlement would be in the range of $735 million to $800 million and would resolve “substantially all” of the lawsuits and claims against MGM related to the shooting.

“While nothing will be able to bring back the lives lost or undo the horrors so many suffered on that day, this settlement will provide fair compensation for thousands of victims and their families,” Eglet said in a statement, adding that the deal “represents good corporate citizenship on” the part of MGM.

Another lawyer for the plaintiffs, Craig Eiland, said that the settlement was expected to cover up to 4,500 people, which he said would include everything “from death cases all the way down to those who had [post-traumatic stress disorder].”

Passing the two-year statute of limitations for filing new claims — which happened this week — was critical to finalizing the settlement, Eiland added.

The next step for the plaintiffs will be to have their cases examined by an independent claims administrator, who will need to be approved by a judge. The administrator will review medical bills and other expenses, as well as the circumstances of each victim, before deciding how much each person will receive.

It was not immediately known whether any of the victims who have filed claims will opt out of the settlement and instead take their cases to trial.

At first, MGM responded with an aggressive legal strategy when claims poured in from the injured and the relatives of the dead, who accused the company of negligence in allowing Paddock to stockpile high-powered rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition in his hotel room.

It had sought to block victims from recovering any money from the company, arguing that a little-known federal law passed in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks meant that MGM enjoyed a shield from liability because the shooting qualified as an “act of terrorism” under the law’s expansive definitions.

Because of that — and also because a security firm hired for the concert possessed a special designation from the Department of Homeland Security — MGM argued that its interpretation of the law meant that it should not have to pay damage claims to injured concertgoers. The federal law is known as the Support Anti-Terrorism by Fostering Effective Technologies Act.

As part of its strategy to have the company declared immune from liability by funneling cases to a federal court where that issue could be litigated, MGM sued more than 1,000 people who had already filed cases or indicated an intent to pursue claims against the company.

Though the company’s lawsuits did not seek any money, the strategy stirred anger against MGM. Negotiations soon began with plaintiffs’ lawyers, and by February the two sides were in mediation. By May, the rough contours of the settlement had already been worked out.

On Thursday, MGM’s chief executive, Jim Murren, called the agreement “a major step, and one that we hoped for a long time would be possible. We have always believed that prolonged litigation around these matters is in no one’s best interest.”

All of the settlement — or nearly all — will be funded by MGM’s insurers, who have agreed to pay $751 million to resolve the cases. So the most MGM will have to pay out of its own pockets, depending on the final settlement amount, would be $49 million.

AP/JOHN LOCHER