Despicable MGM Sues Las Vegas Shooting Victims

A lawsuit filed by MGM Resorts International, owner of the Las Vegas hotel from which Stephen Paddock fatally shot 58 people and wounded hundreds, is drawing outrage from survivors of the deadliest mass shooting in U.S. history.  The suit filed against hundreds of the victims of the rampage Oct. 1 outside the Mandalay Bay hotel claims the entertainment giant has "no liability of any kind."  MGM said in a statement the filing was meant to provide a "timely resolution" for shooting victims who sued or will sue in the aftermath of the attack during the Route 91 Harvest Festival. MGM said litigation filed against it "must be dismissed.

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Talk about an example of what is wrong with America today. Even folks that weren't going to sue MGM because their injuries weren't that serious or that didn't deem it worth the trouble and time are going to have to spend six figures to hire a defense attorney to litigate this case and be saddled with the bad credit that comes with a claim being filed against you. Just Awful! MGM management is lower than whale shit.  

Mark, since you are a "trained attorney" I thought you would relish litigating pro bono for those who will be filing claims. 

Ha ha, I haven't practiced for like ten years now. And I wasn't licensed in California and Nevada.

They really aren’t suing the victims.  They are trying to free themselves from being sued by the victims. 

Im not a lawyer and I don’t know the federal and state liability laws.   As a layman my opinion would be it’s not MGM’s  fault for the attack.  If that is found t9 be true, however,  then your next trip to Vegas will be a nightmare as hotels will do a thorough search of every suitcase that enters their hotels.    Be careful what you wish for.

It is a simple negligence case. The determination if they are liable or not is based upon whether they took the same precautions other hotels in the area do to protect their guests. In other words, what is the industry standard and did they follow it? From what has been reported, they did not. They let him use the freight elevator to take large volumes of weapons up to his room and they didn’t do a room check for three days.  Hence, the desperation to get away from the claims with their bizarre legal theory as they are looking at having to pay a lot of money out. 

...so "Talk about an example of what is wrong with America today. Even folks that weren't going to sue MGM because their injuries weren't that serious or that didn't deem it worth the trouble and time are going to have to spend six figures to hire a defense attorney to litigate this case and be saddled with the bad credit that comes with a claim being filed against you. Just Awful! MGM management is lower than whale shit." was BS.  

Bob, the concept of connecting liability to MGM is fairly straightforward as a legal matter. What I mean by that is you are not throwing out some never tried before and novel legal theory to try and assign them some blame. Companding the problem for MGM is that they also owned the concert venue meaning they also had a duty to keep the people that were attending the concert safe.  

Just because the legal theory is tried and true doesn't mean the plaintiffs will win nor does it mean that the case will be simple to try. Any deep pocket defendant is expensive and time-consuming to go up against. Assuming MGM doesn't win their case suing the victims, these personal injury suits brought by the victims will take years to run through the court system. A deep pockets defendant will file every motion they can to stop the case and then when those motions are denied they will seek an immediate appeal on the denial of the motions.  Once the plaintiffs get through all the pre-trial motions and all of those are run through the appeals process, the actual trial takes place. Numerous expensive expert witnesses will be called by the defense requiring the plaintiffs (the victims) to hire their own expensive expert witnesses. The trial will last several days and then if the verdict is unfavorable to MGM you can expect them to appeal that all the way up to the state or even federal supreme court (depending on if there are Federal issues) dragging the case on for a few more years. 

Mark writes:  "Comp(ou)nding the problem for MGM is that they also owned the concert venue meaning they also had a duty to keep the people that were attending the concert safe."  

MGM addesses this in the suit:

"MGM hired a vendor, Contemporary Services Corp., to provide security for the event. By hiring CSC, whose services the Department of Homeland Security has approved 'for protecting against and responding to acts of mass injury and destruction,' MGM is claiming it is absolved from responsibility in the shooting."

Source:  CNN

n.b.  DonDiego is not advocating for or against MGM or the victims of the shooting; in fact, he is just supporting Mark's interpretation. 

Originally posted by: Don

Mark writes:  "Comp(ou)nding the problem for MGM is that they also owned the concert venue meaning they also had a duty to keep the people that were attending the concert safe."  

MGM addesses this in the suit:

"MGM hired a vendor, Contemporary Services Corp., to provide security for the event. By hiring CSC, whose services the Department of Homeland Security has approved 'for protecting against and responding to acts of mass injury and destruction,' MGM is claiming it is absolved from responsibility in the shooting."

Source:  CNN

n.b.  DonDiego is not advocating for or against MGM or the victims of the shooting; in fact, he is just supporting Mark's interpretation. 

What makes MGM’s claim so specious is that the law they are citing's purpose is to shield companies that manufacture or resell anti-terrorism devices and provide anti-terrorism services.  If they are DHS certified, they get to claim immunity from suits arising from terrorism. 

The statute says it is conferring Government Contractor Immunity to DHS certified products and services. What makes the claim so audacious is that MGM is claiming that rather than acting as a provider of hotel rooms and a concert venue on that day MGM was, in fact, acting as a government contractor providing anti-terrorism services because they purchased services from a DHS certified government contractor.

Furthermore, their claim has several other problems.

1. The statute makes no mention of granting immunity to consumers such as MGM of DHS certified products or services. MGM is attempting to argue that Congress intended for that immunity to extend to mere consumers of DHS certified products and services despite the plain language of the statute. 

2. The shooting hasn’t been deemed an act of terrorism by any U.S. law enforcement agency investing it. It was a mass shooting conducted by a lone gunman, and there is no evidence that he was acting with a political motivation. To get immunity it has to be a provable terrorist act. 

3. Even if you could convince a court with this outrageous theory to shield MGM as a government contractor for providing venue security, the shield wouldn’t apply to negligent acts committed at the Mandalay Bay and that seems to be, at least to me, where the most damaging negligent acts occurred.