I wonder what the theater’s duty was from a legal standpoint. What did they have a duty to do?
I mean, since this thing has never happened in a theater before, how were they negligent in preventing it from happening the 1st time?
Surely it would be possible to have alarmed exit doors, but those may be pricey. Also, they may generate a lot of complaints from irritated moviegoers every time some moron goes through them who doesn’t know or doesn’t care that an alarm will sound loud enough for all to hear.
A friend of mine lost her son and 2 of his friends when the car one of them was driving* ran a stop sign and into the path of a semi. The only surviver later sued the other 3 families for payment of his medical bills and emotional trauma.
*Two witnesses at the last bar they were at claimed it was the kid who survived who got behind the wheel. He denied being the driver despite claiming to have no memory of the accident at all. The interior of the car was so contaminated with all of their bodily fluids that forensic testing could not pinpoint who was driving. As a result, the surviver sued everyone.
Her insurance agent explained to her that he’d have done the same thing had her son surivived, and it was SOP, but it didn’t make it any easier on her when she got the papers in the mail.
That this guy wasn’t injured doesn’t mean he’s not a victim; everyone in that theater is a victim. Hell, you even say his friend was shot and killed. His suing here is definitely overboard.
I don’t know see how anyone could think that Warner Bros. could have done anything to prevent the shooting, the guy probably picked DKR simply because he knew the theater would be full and just would have picked another movie if DKR never existed.
Similarly, sure, the theater doesn’t have the doors alarmed, but I’ve never seen alarmed doors at a theater. In the overwhelming majority of cases, as in every case except for this one, the doors are openned because people are leaving, someone is sneaking in, or there’s some other reason to evacuate which would be compelling on it’s own, like a fire. The last thing we need is security at a movie theater. Let’s drive up ticket and concession prices even more because of one nutjob who probably would have shot up any guards anyway.
Holmes’ doctor may or may not have some liability if he had reason to suspect he was unbalanced enough to do something like that and didn’t do something about it, but that’s extremely difficult to prove.
Either way, it’s hard to be upset at him for suing people. Sure, he might be taking advantage of the situation to make a quick buck, but I can also understand him being traumatized and wanting to blame people, not really thinking it through, and his lawyer just encouraging him to file suits against everyone he could tenuously connect to it. Hell, his lawyer probably figures WB will settle anyway, as most companies of that size usually do since it’s generally cheaper to just through some money at the complaint than to go to court to prove their innocence. So if you’re going to be upset at anyone, pit the lawyer who is more interested in the money and either encouraged him or at least didn’t do enough to discourage him from filing ridiculous suits.
I can see he would be traumatized. I can even see him filing a lawsuit although I don’t really see the theater having any responsibility. But there is no legal reason why it had to be filed before all the bodies were buried.
I like the way you trimmed my quote and tried to make it look like it was MY line of reasoning instead of my guess as to the plaintiff’s state of mine.
Congratulations. You’ve somehow managed to grasp the obvious.
I’m gonna take a wild guess and say the guy traumatized after seeing his buddies chest explode next to him right after some gun firing shithead came through said doors.
Congrat’s again! You just called one of the Denver victims a moron. It must be so wonderful to have your enormous head and be capable of being so superior to a traumatized victim.
I don’t think I disagree with many others in this thread (although I feel pretty bad about any sort of alignment with a shithead such as you). I think the plaintiff is acting way too soon. So soon that I’m willing to give him the benefit of the doubt as to whether he’s acting out of rage and anger instead of greed.
If you guys want to truss up his lawyer over pile of lumber though, I’ll bring the marshmallows
No shit? I called the guy a moron and disagreed with his (as narrated by YOU) logic? And for this you call ME a shithead and a bad guy for insulting him?
Are you really that terminally stupid? Wait, don’t answer. I think I can figure that one out based on your post.
Actually I was going by the size of your enormous forehead. Just a guess that it was full of shit.
And sorry about my stupidity. I made an assumption that the guy thought the theater bore some responsibility because, well, the guy has filed a lawsuit against the theater. I know. It’s my day to use crazy logic.
If the door said “Emergency Exit Only, Alarm Will Sound” and there was no alarm then I would agree with you.
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Why? As was said earlier, doors are alarmed for either security or the benefit of the proprietor. The proprietor is under no obligation to actually alarm the door if all they want to do is keep people from using it. An emergency exit exists at the requirement of the fire department. If a proprietor wants to keep people from using it as a normal exit and doesn’t want to monitor it, there are ways to accomplish that. One way is to actually alarm it. Another is to warn people there is an alarm and hopefully that will keep them from misusing it. It might not be worth the time and hassle to respond to an alarm, not to mention the annoyance it might cause other customers.
If a store hangs a sign that says they will prosecute shoplifters to the full extent of the law, do you think that requires them, legally, to do so?
What I said was that an exit door labeled “Emergency Exit Only, Alarm Will Sound” should, in fact, have an alarm.
For example, suppose parents lose a child in the theater. One of them goes to the interior exit to make sure the child doesn’t leave, and the other starts looking around the theater itself. Since the exterior exit says it has an alarm, they don’t believe the child could have left there.
So my opinion is that the “Alarm Will Sound” sign should not be used just to scare people. I make no claim about the legal requirement.
I’ve been to that theater and the exits are marked as that; ‘Exit’. Going out of those doors leads to the parking lots and you avoid the crowd shoving through the lobby (although you miss the bathrooms that way).
I’m with the folks who say this sounds like an attorney trying to cash in. I believe the attorney filed the suit because the attorney wanted to get himself into a position of representing the victim before WB reached out to them with an offer. Now, the attorney will get a cut of what ever goes down, be it an offer from WB or a class action suit.
Ah. I guess I’ve been going to the same theater for so long that I assumed most were like mine. Nobody exits the theater from the emergency exit doors, which is how ours are labelled. Everyone goes down the side staircases and out the main entrance doors to the theater and out into the parking lot through the lobby.
So…I retract what I said about the exit doors, which are, in fact, just regular exit doors.
When it’s directly in the theater, there is. All it takes is for you to prop the door open, and then you can let in several friends. It’s the same shoplifting idea.
Also, I can’t remember ever seeing an emergency exit without an alarm. You’ve just left because of an emergency. You need to warn everyone. These things exist to get out of the building during a fire or similar, not because you need get out to the parking lot a little quicker.
You guys are making me feel dirty for having to side with the guy. But, if this is the way people think, then, yes, someone needs to sue. Even if he doesn’t win, maybe they’ll rethink the stupidity of having easy direct access into a freaking theater.
Except its been pointed out a few times now that those weren’t emergency doors…they were normal exit doors that people would regularly use to exit the movie theater.