It may not be over for the lawsuit filed by families of the victims of the deadly 2012 shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary School.
A group of doctors has filed a friend-of-the-court brief asking the Connecticut Supreme Court, which dismissed the suit against gun maker Remington Arms last October, to overturn that decision. The 10 doctors include emergency room physicians and trauma surgeons who treated patients shot by military-style rifles in attacks at the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, at Columbine High School in Colorado on April 20, 1999, an Aurora, Colorado movie theater on July 20, 2012, and in San Bernardino, California, on Dec. 4, 2015.
The group maintains that makers of military-style firearms such as the Remington-produced Bushmaster AR-15 ”“ used at Sandy Hook to kill 20 children and six adult staff members ”“ should be held liable for injuries those weapons cause.
“These military weapons are completely distinct from handguns and rifles used for hunting or self-defense,” lawyers for the doctors said in the brief. “They can cause enormous human carnage, destruction and chaos with their high energy and rapid fire bullets that leave gaping holes and turn surrounding tissue and organs into goo in large numbers of victims in a matter of seconds.”
In overturning the lawsuit against Remington, filed in 2014, State Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis agreed with Remington’s argument that the lawsuit was barred by a federal law that shields gun manufacturers from most lawsuits over criminal use of their products.
The families appealed that decision in November.
