Baldwin and his wife are feeling the pressure. It’s probably a wise decision to hunker down.
IMHO the main charges will be against whoever is responsible for the live rounds. Secondary charges against the armorer and the prop master for negligence. Perhaps AD David Halls will be charged because he said the gun was cold (safe).
Baldwin is pretty far down a long list of people criminally responsible. It would be different if he was horsing around with the gun. A Civil Court case is more likely.
Even if they did they’re only selling the cartridge and not the process of loading it.
But in this case, they were the first error in a long list of errors of following safety procedures. If any of these people in the string had done their job this wouldn’t have happened.
I’m beginning to wonder if that was just bad reporting in the early days. It’s pretty much fallen out of all the later stories and I don’t think anyone involved in the investigation has said anything solid about it at all. It seemed unlikely to me that crew members that were complaining about 13 hour work days with an hour drive to and from the set would hang out there a few hours shooting guns after work. But you always have to account for the fact that people is weird.
Yes, but if it could be established that they mixed ammunition it doesn’t dictate the end use of it. It’s hand loaded and visually discernible from other cartridges. Moreover, the purpose of an armorer is to act in this capacity because of the nature of the end use.
It would be an interesting legal argument.
No, but his job was to deliver either blanks or dummies. If he delivered live ammo, that’s the first link in the safety chain broken before it even started.
What’s the logic test for this? If a chemical company delivers the wrong product and a chemist dumps it into a beaker without looking at it whose fault is that?
The chemical company may have made a mistake but they’re not involved in the safety protocol of the movie set. That starts with the armorer.
I don’t think there’s any evidence this occurred at this point.
In one of the links above, the ammo supplier himself said some live rounds that appear similar to his dummy rounds may have got mixed into the bunch.
I don’t know why we need a hypothetical about chemicals, we already have a real life situation we are talking about. If the movie company ordered and paid for dummy rounds and he shipped live rounds also, that’s the beginning of the fuck ups. If he’s not responsible for what comes out of his store, who is? That still leaves plenty of blame to go around on the movie set.
Thell Reed defends his daughter’s training. I didn’t realize he had aged so much.
I agree sabotage is still a possibility. The police investigation will sort that out.
I wonder how often rubber guns are used by extras in the background? Or someone just walking around with a holstered pistol? Reducing the number of real guns makes sense. Let the armorer focus on the camera shots that feature a gun.
Orders that aren’t filled to spec are an everyday occurrence. I use to audit trailers for a grocery chain. It was a Goddamn miracle if the warehouse got the order right.
The supply company is in no way involved in the production of the movie and that includes the safety procedures.
Yeah, but if you bought a box of nails from Home Depot, I’ll bet you’d be damned surprised if it turned out that one of them was actually a blasting cap designed to look like a nail. Home Depot is in no way involved in the production of your deck though and that includes your safety procedures, so the lost fingers are all on you.
If blasting caps looked identical to nails and somehow home depot substituted a blasting cap for a nail and it took your fingers off, are you saying that Home Depot wouldn’t be liable at all?
Liability isn’t either-or. It’s entirely possible that a court would find the distributor, the armorer, the AD and Baldwin to all be liable to some degree. Joint and severable liability is a big part of Tort law.
In terms of criminal liability, I believe some sort of negligence needs to be shown. So it would come down to the exact reasons why things happened the way they did.
Any cartridge supplied will by default be distinguishable between standard ammunition and blanks. Loading of a movie prop starts with an armorer. It doesn’t matter what they have on stock or received in a shipment. That’s their function.
No, but that would be the implication if what @Magiver said were correct. There will be plenty of liability to go around (as you note) and, IMHO, that will potentially include liability by the supplier for providing live rounds in a box that was supposed to be full of dummies if that’s what happened. In my ridiculous example, yes, Home Depot would likely be liable as well.
And the supplier’s function was to supply dummy rounds. If the supplier commingled dummy and live rounds in the same box, trust me that they will bear some liability too.
mixing a delivery order is not something that would be considered a liability unless the product could not be distinguished from another (thereby creating harm). If they were short 1 blank cartridge then they are responsible for filling the order with that cartridge.
And the function of the supplier was to supply blanks or dummies. Unless you are holding back some evidence that the armorer asked for some live ammo to be mixed in, the supplier is step one in a series of mistakes that lead to a dead woman. Minus his original mistake, this would have never happened. That doesn’t mean he’s solely at fault and I don’t think anyone thinks that. But unless you are experienced in New Mexico law and could point out to me the statute that removes liability from a seller who shipped the live ammo with dummy rounds, I’m going to stick with it’s partly his fault.
Then why couldn’t the man that sold them tell the difference? Also, he told police that some live rounds may have been mixed in with the dummies because they were so similar in looks. And, as a kicker, it’s looking that he stole this ammo from the armorer’s dad from an earlier movie.
I’d also be curious if movie companies need any special kind of insurance coverage or approval to have live rounds on a set. While I realize that anyone over 21 can buy pistol ammo, I wonder what the exact rules are for bringing it on the set for use in the movie.
Exactly. I’m not caught up anything, but if we’re trying to determine who’s fault this is (ie, liability), then it can be many people/companies fault. Or nobody’s, just an accident. Any arguing about whether it is, or isn’t, and why, that is exactly what happens in a jury room.
If this were a civil case, there’d need to be some evidence of fault to get to a jury. If so, for this situation, it might look something like:
Does a bullet supplier have a duty to not mix live rounds with dummy rounds that are being sold to a movie set? Y/N;
If Yes, Did gun supplier mix live rounds with dummy rounds that were sold to a movie set? Y/N
or
Does Alec Baldwin have a duty to check a “prop” gun for live rounds? Y/N
If yes, Did Alec Baldwin check the “prop” gun for live rounds? Y/N
Get all the YES’s, and then a jury would get an instruction similar to this: What is each person’s percentage of fault?
You could put 0%, 1%, 99%. or 1/3 for all. or 100 on one person. Whatever a jury decides. Just equal 100.
This is very simplified for the sake of clarity.
*Quoting post for emphasis, there were other good things in that post. Just want to emphasize it’s not just his fault or her fault, it can be both, or neither, or someone else’s too.
The owner of the business is unlikely to be the person who picked out and shipped the stuff–you have clerks who do this type of thing. So the clerk probably picked up a half dozen boxes of 50 (or whatever blanks) per box and shipped them. Perhaps a brief glance to verify the box was full-or perhaps not. Usually the clerk simply assumes a box is full on new ammunition. In any event the clerk is not going to individually examine each bullet.
Note however the armorer on the movie set sees each bullet as she puts in in the gun. So she can see if it is a blank or a live round.
Unless he was hired by the production company he’s just a vendor. It’s not part of any safety protocol to purchase certified prop material that can be loaded by a blind person. If the order was indeed wrong that’s not unusual. This is why you hire people who can identify and properly load the correct cartridges.
Even if you have proof that the wrong cartridges were sold to the armorer and or production company it’s irrelevant. If they’re wrong they get sent back and not loaded into a prop gun.
Don’t know, not relevant.
I don’t even know that he has any employees, but that still isn’t an excuse to let him off the hook. As for just picking up a box and assuming it had no live rounds, that wouldn’t be possible in this case. The manufacturer, Starlight I think, only supplies brass. They sell no live ammo, no blanks and no dummies. Their customers buy the brass so they can make their own blanks dummies or maybe live rounds. So at some point, PDQ LLC had to load and re-box that brass because it would be unusable otherwise.
Yep, she certainly should have, since she’s said she recognized them after the fact when she unloaded the gun. She was step two in the chain of screwups.
He shouldn’t know if he’s selling live ammo or blanks? Again, could you point out the NM law that protects vendors from being responsible for shipping a dangerous product instead of the safe one they promised to deliver? I haven’t seen that in any news articles. I have seen that the police have served search warrants on all PDQ LLC properties and have questioned the owner more than once. Apparently neither the NM police or prosecutors remember the law that let’s vendors off the hook. You’d think that the owner of PDQ, having a NM lawyer and all, would know he could just turn everything over to the police and say “Look, they fucked up! They trusted me! That’s their problem.” According to you, that’s a rock solid defense.
Why isn’t it relevant? Because it contradicts your opinion?
I know this won’t make a difference, but I’m going to give it a try. Many of your posts in this thread are prime examples of why people just give up on trying to have a conversation with you. You jump to a position and refuse to back it up with facts. Repeating your opinion over and over isn’t really a discussion. You’ve been asked to show us the NM law that you keep saying totally absolves PDQ from any liability if they shipped live ammo instead of dummies. Can you at least do that much, please?
IANAL, but ISTM that, in New Mexico, this is going to be at the heart of some of the civil lawsuits. My guess is that they’ll sue anybody and everybody with resources: