Sandy Hook parents ask court to reinstate lawsuit against Newtown
NEWTOWN — Parents of two children slain in the Sandy Hook shootings asked appellate judges on Wednesday to overrule a lower court decision that threw out their wrongful death lawsuit against Newtown and the school district last year.
The parents’ attorneys argued in state Appellate Court that educators failed to follow safety protocols when a 20-year-old gunman shot his way into a locked Sandy Hook school, and committed the worst crime in modern Connecticut history.
Lawyers representing Newtown and the school district counter-argued that educators had every right to use their discretion during the 2012 mass shooting, and “the intervening criminal actions by the shooter destroys any casual link between the defendants’ teachers’ and staffs’ actions
and any alleged negligence.”
Wednesday’s hearing in Hartford comes 11 months after state Superior Court Judge Robin Wilson dismissed the parents’ lawsuit, ruling in part, “To say that the faculty and staff of the school were to act in a prescribed manner in responding to an emergency situation would ... be illogical and in direct contradiction to the very purpose of governmental immunity: allowing for the exercise of judgment without the fear of second-guessing.”
It's now up to the Appellate
Court to rule on the appeal by Neil Heslin and Scarlett Lewis, the parents of slain first-grader Jesse Lewis, and Leonard Pozner, the father of Noah Pozner.
“After a hearing like this, you just want to go home and hug your kids and tell them how much you love them,” said the parents’ lead attorney, Don Papcsy, after the 40-minute hearing in Hartford. “You never want to be in the position that these parents were put in.”
The parents’ appeal is separate from a state Supreme Court appeal by 10 families who lost loved ones in the Sandy Hook shootings, who are suing the maker of the rifle used by the shooter.
The Supreme Court in mid-March sided with those 10 families and returned their lawsuit against Remington to trial court.
That case, which has attracted national attention, is expected to stay in the headlines as the gunmaker appeals to U.S. Supreme Court.
At the same time, the three parents are among the Sandy Hook families suing extremist Alex Jones for defamation in Texas and in Connecticut.