Federal Judge Rules Aurora Theater Shooting Was Foreseeable
This decision could have some unexpected consequences. Just where does the divide between individual and corporate responsibilities lie? Do you have to provide “protection” to any or all locations where a group of people might get together?
The owner of the Aurora movie theater that was the site of a deadly 2012 attack could have reasonably enough foreseen the danger of such an attack to be held liable for it, a federal judge ruled Friday.
Noting “the grim history of mass shootings and mass killings that have occurred in more recent times,” U.S. District Court Judge R. Brooke Jackson ruled that Cinemark — owner of the Century Aurora 16 theater — could have predicted that movie patrons might be targeted for an attack. Jackson’s ruling allows 20 lawsuits filed by survivors of the attack or relatives of those killed to proceed toward trial.
“Although theaters had theretofore been spared a mass shooting incident, the patrons of a movie theater are, perhaps even more than students in a school or shoppers in a mall, ‘sitting ducks,’ ” Jackson wrote.
More: Federal Judge Rules Aurora Theater Shooting Was Foreseeable - the Denver Post