In victim suit, MGM’S heft could prove tough to beat
The victims of the Oct. 1 mass shooting in Las Vegas will likely struggle to win compensation from Mandalay Bay for physical and psychological damage, a lawyer who represented the victims in the 1999 Columbine massacre said.
Lawyer Stephen Walburg said that plaintiffs in any legal case arising from the Las Vegas shooting will have to prove that the attack was a “foreseeable event.”
In the April 20, 1999, attack at Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado, senior students Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold murdered 12 students and one teacher.
Walburg won compensation for Columbine victims from the parents of the teenage shooters by proving they were negligent in allowing their underage sons to amass weapons.
Walburg said the Las Vegas massacre has many hallmarks of the shooting inside the Century 16 movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, in 2012.
Much like Stephen Paddock, the
Las Vegas shooter, Aurora shooter James Holmes planned his midnight attack well in advance.
In the Aurora shooting case, a jury ruled in favor of the theater, deciding that the attack could not have been foreseen. The defense hired expert witnesses who said methodical, lone-wolf shooters are the toughest to predict.
“This is not a case that I would want to take. It is going to be an uphill battle,” Walburg said.
However, Las Vegas police said Monday that a Mandalay Bay security officer was shot by Paddock six minutes before he fired onto the crowd. Robert Murdock, an attorney at Murdock and Associates in Las Vegas, said that could damage the hotel’s case that the shooting was unforeseeable.
Murdock said it will be very important to know when the security guard alerted central command and what was said.
“This (news) is a big deal,” said Murdock. “The evidence is starting to point to Mandalay Bay knowing that something was going to happen.”
In a statement released late Tuesday, MGM Resorts International, the owner of Mandalay Bay, disputed Sheriff Joe Lombardo’s revised timeline of the shooting.
“This remains an ongoing investigation with a lot of moving parts,” MGM Resorts spokeswoman Debra Deshong said in the statement. “We cannot be certain about the most recent timeline that has been communicated publically (sic) and we believe what is currently being expressed may not be accurate.”
Paddock brought 10 bags filled with guns and ammunition into his suite on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay
Bay during his stay. He kept a “do not disturb” sign on his door and installed cameras in the hallway to monitor employees.
A lawsuit by victims would most likely center on the failure of Mandalay Bay’s security and housekeeping employees to call into question the large number of bags and the door sign, said Adam Kutner, a Las Vegas attorney specializing in personal injury.
Casinos have an extensive array of surveillance cameras both inside and outside their properties. They also keep detailed information about the habits of their top clients. The hotel should have been able to detect whether Paddock was acting unusually, Kutner said.
“There are tons of questions that still need to be answered,” Kutner said Friday. “We have to see the video. It will be really interesting to see his interactions with employees.”
Neither police nor Mandalay Bay has made available video that shows how those bags were brought into Paddock’s room, nor have they said whether his habits differed.
The manufacturers of the bump stock that allowed Paddock to turn his guns into automatic weapons might also be liable, Kutner said. Indeed, a Las Vegas law firm has filed a class-action lawsuit against a bump stock manufacturer on behalf of all those “who tragically suffered emotional distress” as a result of the mass shooting.
Contact Todd Prince at tprince@ reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0386. Follow @toddprincetv on Twitter.