Witnesses said Baldwin and Helena were only two or three feet apart. She would have been hit in the chest or stomach if the gun was pointed directly at her.
Hitting under the armpit sounds like the gun was pointing off to the side. It unfortunately wasn’t enough to miss.
I’m interested in seeing police illustrations of the angles of the shot. That will be evidence in court.
37 second video demonstration
Similar to how the US constitution makes reference to some actions affecting or being performed by “the several states” in the sense that in modern speech would be expressed as “the individual states”.
“Severable” in law means that you can separate the effects of different legal provisions and upon different legal persons within the same case. IIRC in liability, “joint” by itself alone would mean everyone shares liability for the whole thing, and “several” by itself alone would mean it was understood each has a liability (gross and/or share) independent of the others.
My understanding of joint and several liability (from aviation) means that multiple people can be liable for the same thing, and that each can be held liable for the entire amount of a judgement if the others don’t have means to pay.
There was a case years ago of a Piper Cub that had been modified with a movie camera holder in front of the pilot. The airport operator had a dispute with the pilot and parked a van across the runway so he couldn’t take off. The pilot tried to take off anyway, and hit the van. His head slammed into the homemade camera miunt and he was injured.
So we have a situation here where two people did incredibly stupid things, resulting in an accident. And who paid? Even though the vast amount of liability was assigned to both the airport operator and the guy who installed the camera mount, a small bit of liability was assigned to Piper, for not having shoulder belts in the airplane even though they were not required when the plane was built and sold, and at the time they weren’t even common. The plaintiff also claimed that Piper was partially at fault because visibility over the nose was almost nonexistent when flying from the backseat - a trait it shares with just about every taildragger airplane made.
The joint and several liability part meant that even though Piper was only assigned a small percentage of the blame, the other guilty parties had no money, so Piper had to cough up $1 million dollars for something it had no part in for a ‘defect’ which wasn’t, and for the fact that tailwheel airplanes have poor visibility when taking off.
That’s one of the reasons aviation became so expensive - liability insurance for manufacturers.
Maybe I’m inserting too much into the scenario. I was under the impression they were lining up a shot. If she was standing next to the camera then 2 or 3 feet seems way to close a camera shot. Could that be 2 or 3 meters or yards away?
Not from the perspective of collection, no.
Suppose Joe crashes into your car, because he was driving fast and his brakes failed. You sue Joe, and the Auto Shop that recently fixed his brakes, and Ford because the brake parts the Auto Shop installed may have been defective. The court finds all three were liable, awards you damages of $100,000, and rules that they were jointly and severally liable. The Court allocates liability at 50% Joe, 30% the Auto Shop, and 20% Ford.
So what do you do to collect? You go for the deep pockets and enforce the judgment for $100,000 from Ford. Because the three defendants are jointly liable to you, that allocation of liability doesn’t apply to you. Ford has to pay you 100% of the award. You’re made whole.
Then, because Ford is severally liable with the other two, Ford can go after Joe for $50,000, and Auto Shop for $20,000. But if Joe doesn’t have proper insurance and not much assets, Ford may not get anything and has to eat the $50,000 it’s paid on Joe’s behalf. Probably will have better luck getting $30,000 from Auto Shop’s insurance.
If the Court only ordered several liability, you would have had to go after Joe for $50,000, Auto Shop for $30,000, and Ford for $20,000.
If it were purely joint liability, if Ford pays the whole amount, there may not be any right of recovery from the other two, depending on the legal concept of joint liability in your jurisdiction.
Correct. The concept provides maximum flexibility to the successful plaintiff in recovering.
Generally it’s done in the liability phase of the trial. The Plaintiff wants at least some liability attached to each defendant, especially the deep pockets ones, to trigger joint liability. The allocation is made by the jury (or the judge, in a judge-alone trial). And since it’s a civil matter, it’s done as part of the verdict, not part of a conviction.
As, shucks. To be elevated to Stone and McCoy status! Thanks. 
In this “last picture” taken on set, everything does seem pretty cozy. Maybe it was a close-up shot.
I think we’re entirely on the same page (ETA: for as far as I went).
Where our presentations appear to differ is that I was comparing joint liability to several liability (only), whereas you were accurately describing joint and several liability.
Looks like that link I provided is a one-time use thing with a token. Maybe this is better for those with interest:
I do not like where this story is going.
Crap! And I even knew the difference on that one.
Problem is that it doesn’t match what little we know of the actual event. Apparently, Baldwin was sitting on one of the pews. So Halyna was in a crouching position with the camera. The director was behind her, crouching a bit to look into the monitor. And there were at least two other people we know of that were also around the monitor: The continuity woman who has already filed a lawsuit and the other crew member who was a longtime friend of Halyna. Presumably the other actor in the photo was nearby also.
Really, no matter how they set up it was going to be a lot of people for such a small area.
My understanding is they were shooting in NM to cut costs. Does a low budget movie like this have the ability to film on a studio lot or is that too expensive? From what I’ve seen of the “town” they were shooting in, there are probably dozens of Hollywood sets that would have worked. Throw in a day of shooting on the sand and you are done.
Not sure what you mean. Obviously the picture wasn’t taken seconds before the tragedy, but it is easy to rearrange things in your mind so that Baldwin is sitting in a pew and the camera guy and others are only a few feet away. It isn’t some giant camera that is being wheeled around.
I agree with you that it’s good to get a feeling for the space. I’m just pointing out that it really doesn’t tell us anything about placement of people. And it must have been an early photo, because all the camera people had walked off set before the shooting occurred and the photo has a cameraman in it.
Like I said, it would be nice to see a computerized run thru of where people were and what they were doing at the time. I’m also pretty sure we won’t see one before a trial. As of now the stories are pretty confusing.
Reid Russel was operating the camera when the incident happened and I am assuming is the one holding the camera in that photo. Not all the camera crew left.
Thank you (and sorry about the hijack)
Thanks. I had understood all the camera crew had left and that Halnya herself had been operating the camera.
Assistant Director Halls has been avoiding talking with Occupational Health. Judge tells him to do it.
The days of the Hollywood backlot are long gone, not only because people started recognizing the same backgrounds over and over, but also rising land prices in Los Angeles made it lucrative to sell. Universal is an exception. Even the big productions are typically shooting on location with a purpose-built, one-time set.
I haven’t seen any photos of the Rust set but the aerial shot of the church, but with it standing alone like that I’m getting the impression the town it was in is meant to be one of those rickety western towns that would lend itself to that.
Because the church set was in the news so much, I happened to notice it in a couple of other movies. One is a Tom Hanks western and another is some western which just came out on Netflix. I’m assuming that its notoriety is going to mean that set will need to be rebuilt.
As for these kinds of movie lots in general, cities and states have realized they can get movie money injected into their community by creating an environment suitable for filming. They sometimes have incentives for companies to create film ranches and sound stages to entice producers to film in their location. There’s not really the structure in place to blacklist producers since there are so many locations that will welcome them (or at least not ask too many questions).