When we filed this case, legal experts said we had no chance—which, frankly, I understand where that's coming from. What those experts did is they looked at the law to see if there was a precedent for this type of case, and they said, “OK, this hasn't happened before, therefore, it's not going to happen now.” But that attitude will stop law from developing in its tracks.
No matter what the case is, if you get a case and there's a right and a wrong side, and there are people who are aggrieved and there's bad conduct causing that aggrievement, I think your job is to try to find a way, whether anybody else has gone there before or not.
One thing that I'd like to see come from this case is a recognition by the industries that underwrite the gun industry that, at least in certain cases, it's not just a morally questionable financial relationship, but it's a bad bet. Even without this case, Remington was able to go bankrupt not once but twice, and banks ended up eating millions and millions of dollars. I think it's time for reputable insurance companies and banks to ask themselves whether it's worth doing business with this industry that really isn't invested at all in public safety.
When we talk about Remington here, we're really talking about a holding company that was created by a private equity firm in Manhattan. Remington was a going business for almost 200 years. They built one of the most respected and well-known companies in the United States. They were up there with the Ford Motor Company. And they had never sold AR-15s, and they had never sold handguns—they were content with their market of hunting rifles and hunting shotguns. And within a short period of time, this private equity firm destroyed Remington. There was no interest whatsoever in public safety. The only interest was in profit and selling as many—in this case AR-15s—to as many people as possible, and to reap the profits for their investors.
What I don't think I realized until relatively recently is how much this was a case about excess, a capitalist pursuit where people just lost their way, lost their moral compass, and how dangerous that is.
Images from top: Getty Images, Richard Freeda
What lessons have you learned as the Remington case has evolved?
GUN LAWS
When Connecticut attorney and Dean's Cabinet member Josh Koskoff JD'94 brought a lawsuit against Remington Arms in 2014, the manufacturer of the AR-15 Bushmaster rifle used in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, on behalf of nine of the victims' families, many legal observers dismissed the case as a long shot. A 2005 federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), largely shields gun manufacturers from liability when their weapons are used in a crime. But Koskoff focused the case on Remington’s marketing practices, and in 2019, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the suit to proceed into the discovery phase.
One of the now-bankrupt gun company's insurers has offered the plaintiffs a $33 million settlement, but as of press time, the case was still headed to trial. We asked Koskoff what he's learned from the case.
Interview by Jon Gorey
Josh Koskoff JD’94
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