Judge grants Newtown families a voice in Remington bankruptcy case

NEWTOWN — A bankruptcy judge has given gunmaker Remington permission to sell off its company at a mid-September auction, but not before the promising nine Sandy Hook families suing the company that he’d listen to their arguments for keeping the lawsuit alive.

Specifically, the judge will hear arguments next week on the families’ motion to investigate Remington’s motives for seeking bankruptcy protection.

“The Sandy Hook families suspect ... that (Remington’s) financial position has in fact been improving, and that a desire to avoid continuing costs associated with litigating the Sandy Hook wrongful death action, as well as the potentially significant liability associated therewith, were major factors motivating the commencement of these cases,” an attorney for the Sandy Hook families wrote Monday in federal bankruptcy court in Alabama. “Discovery will allow the Sandy Hook families to test these vague assertions of financial need and provide the court with the full picture of (Remington’s) financial picture.”

Judge Clifton Jessup Jr.’s concession to the families came during a busy day in bankruptcy court for the nation’s oldest gunmaker, which is beset by lawsuits, debt and slumping retail sales.

Remington is the maker of the

AR-15-style rife used in the 2012 shooting of 20 first-graders and six educators at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.

The Alabama judge denied two other motions by the Sandy Hook families — to include themselves on the list of Remington’s creditors, and to put off the Sept. 17 auction date the company asked for.

The families have been scrambling to regain the pretrial momentum they had against Remington before the company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy on July 27 and left them off its list of creditors.

“(Remington) began considering a sale of their business just three weeks after the U.S. Supreme Court denied the Remington defendants’ petition,” the families’ lawyer argued in a court document. It was “their last hope of preventing the Sandy Hook wrongful death action from proceeding to trial.”

The lawyer is referring to Nov. 12, when the nation’s highest court refused to hear Remington’s appeal of a Connecticut Supreme Court ruling, which effectively sent the Sandy Hook lawsuit to trial in 2021.

An attorney for Remington denied the allegation that it was trying to wipe out the lawsuit by seeking bankruptcy protection during Tuesday’s hearing in Alabama, the Associated Press reported.

The developments in Remington’s bankruptcy come as the families were preparing to question Remington executives under oath about matters that company attorneys

called improper and invasive.

But since late July, all the pretrial procedures have been on hold while the bankruptcy case plays out.

Now the families are focusing on Remington’s motives for seeking bankruptcy.

In particular, the families are asking the Alabama judge for the right to investigate Remington bankruptcy documents and interview Remington executives about company finances and insurance coverage.

“The Sandy Hook families’ discovery requests are limited, seeking information directly related to (Remington’s) business operations, financial conditions, and assets, as well as information necessary to establish whether wrongdoing has occurred,” the families’ attorney argued in court papers.