Ok, so I read this article. To summarize, Adam Lanza’s mom is being sued.
Her estate has at least a million bucks (insurance on the house). Let’s say for the sake of argument her estate is a million bucks, even.
The estate administrator, Samuel Starks, presumably has only a fiduciary duty to protect the money - he has no stake in the fight.
A reasonable person could conclude that were this case to go to a jury trial, the emotional nature of the case means there is no real chance of the plaintiffs not winning.
However, a jury trial costs money. The plaintiff’s attorneys have to be paid, and the estate will have to be defended using funds from itself.
So, couldn’t Samuel Starks go to a negotiation and say “yes, you’re gonna win. However, if you go to trial, it’s going to cost you $100k in legal fees, and then I’m going to spend $100k in legal fees from the estate itself to defend. That leaves you only 800k you can even potentially take. So how about we settle for 850, and I’ll give the $150k difference to the heirs.”
Both parties come out ahead. Samuel Starks has 150k to give to the heirs of the estate, fulfilling his fudiciary duty, and the plaintiffs get all of the money they were ever going to get plus 50k. (it’s irrelevant if the jury award a billion bucks, there is only 1 million at stake regardless)
IMO, that would be a breach of his fiduciary duty. I’m sure that Mrs. Lanza had homeowners insurance which would cover part of any jury verdict and pay for a legal defense.
I’m not an expert in CT law, but there are several viable and eminently winnable defenses to any negligence claim against her: no proximate cause, a supervening criminal act, harm outside the scope of the negligence, not negligent at all.
If I’m her heir, I’m suing this guy if he gives away $850k.
She provided the guns to a severely mentally ill person. Plaintiff’s lawyers are going to argue pretty hard that she should have known Adam was dangerous. Jury will award so hard it’s not funny. The end.
This is barely even about the law. Good luck finding a jury that doesn’t hate Nancy Lanza.
Are you seriously suggesting that every autistic person is potentially dangerous?
And wouldn’t it be better if the families sued the school district instead, claiming lack of adequate security? Governments have deep pockets; they could easily score much more than $850K.
I don’t think elementary schools in nice areas typically have much security at all. My guess is that members of the local jury pool would be a bit more sympathetic to the school district than the mother. I wouldn’t advise either suit, however.
It was my understanding that they were her guns and that he stole them out of her closet. And she died because of it. She was a victim so I doubt a jury is going to hate her.
Plus, it probably won’t get to a jury anyways. Her negligence, if any, in keeping guns in her closet when she had a 20 year old son diagnosed with autism, was not the proximate cause of the killing of the students. The proximate cause was the independent and supervening criminal act of Adam Lanza.
Given that she taught Adam to shoot, I think a local jury wouldn’t give a damn about the law. Why WOULD they? Nobody has yet paid for those murders, and this would be the ONE CHANCE to extract some kind of retribution.
ETA: judges have to live in their communities. I sure wouldn’t stand in the way of a jury trial, law or not, if I were a judge. You’d be shunned. You’d have to move.
He may have taken the guns out of the closet but I seem to recall reading that she took him target shooting with her because it was recreational activity she already enjoyed herself (recall a friend of hers describing how she was very proud of an antique gun of some sort that she owned) and she was trying to get him interested in something besides sitting in his room with video games. If so, she was responsible for him learning how to handle, load, use firearms.
To someone else who asked about autistic people being assumed to be dangerous, don’t know how the person being addressed feels about it but to me it’s not even pertinent if he had a specific diagnosis of autism or something else. He was (or had been) under psychiatric care or had at least been evaluated and was being medicated, if I remember right? If such a person lived with me I would not have any firearms in my home at all and I sure as heck would not personally see to it that the person was trained in how to use them. Not because mental illness makes people violent by default or anything like that, rather because some medications are known to have side effects that include depression and even suicidal ideation.
If the law says she’s not liable (and I don’t know CT law, so YMMV), then it will never get to a jury. Juries decide questions of fact; judges decide questions of law.
Judges who make legal decisions based on what pleases the neighbors get overturned on appeal.
(Judges make unpopular decisions all the time. Do you have examples of judges being forced to move because of unpopular decisions?)
No primary sources though.
I do think Nancy was negligent though, she was aware her son was obsessed with school massacres to the point of having a spreadsheet of victim counts. If articles I have read are accurate.
Setting aside the debate about the chances for the outcome in the lawsuit for a moment, I would assume that there’s more in the estate than just the insurance. There is also the house itself, plus whatever liquid assets she had.
I’ve always heard Connecticut real estate prices are high, given the proximity to New York, so that house may be a considerable asset in its own right?
Yes, settlements can occur reasonably quickly if all parties agree, and the sort of analysis/horse trading in the OP is part of how such things often go.
But I think the OP skates over the fiduciary duty of the estate administrator a bit too quickly. That duty is owed to the heirs, which I understand is the deceased’s other surviving son.
I would doubt very much that the administrator could sign off on a settlement unless the son is on-side with it, as jtgain points out. That’s when the analysis of the chances of the lawsuit will get factored in. The lawsuit pre-trial proceedings may need to work a bit, for both sides to have a good understanding of their respective chances of success/loss.
Which could be why the court assigns a judge from out of the area to sit on the case, to reduce any chance that the judge will have any personal connection. And, a pre-trial motion to strike would likely be appealed, whichever way the trial judge decides, to another level of court whose judges may not have any connection to the area at all.
Courts are very much aware of the possibility of personal conflicts of interest, and will assign judges that don’t have any such interest, as much as possible.
Nancy Lanza’s estate stopped paying the mortgage on the house, so the bank seized it. They then turned it over to Newtown (or sold it to the town for a dollar). The town thought about what to do with it and eventually decided to demolish it (a local firm demolished it for free). All of the stuff in the house was burned so that no one could collect a “souvenir.” They still haven’t decided what to do with the land, but most likely it will remain open land.
In short, no one is profiting from Nancy Lanza’s house.
I am probably showing my lack of Civ Pro experience here, but while I obviously agree that a successful dismissal would be appealed, a judge that refused to dismiss might not grant an interlocutory appeal. Is there something about this issue that would force an interlocutory appeal or allow it by right?
Obviously, will depend on Connecticut civ pro, and I don’t know anything about that! However, the system I’m familiar with does allow for appeals on points of law when a motion to dismiss on a summary judgment is refused, by leave of the appellate court. However, it is discretionary, which is why I suggested both sides will likely engage in some pre-trial manoeuverings, to get a clear understanding of the strength and weaknesses of each side’s case.
Interesting that the house has been completely destroyed.