2:00

health challenges are particular to this person.

2:02

And we've gone through the cycle so many

2:04

times that it's really become just

2:07

almost like an American tradition for us now.

2:10

But recently, there have been actually some

2:13

efforts to try and broaden the scope

2:15

of who might be legally accountable for

2:17

these shootings. We want to get you

2:19

now to Yavalde, Texas, families of victims

2:21

of the Rob Elementary school shooting and

2:24

making an announcement. You can say a

2:26

lot of things about the

2:28

law enforcement response in this case. But

2:31

one thing you can't say is

2:33

that they caused this shooting. Families

2:36

of Yavalde shooting victims filed lawsuits

2:38

against companies they say bear responsibility

2:40

for products used by the gunman.

2:43

What's happening here is we have these

2:45

two new lawsuits filed by the families

2:47

of most of the victims of the

2:50

Yavalde massacre. Lawsuits have now been filed

2:52

against three companies, Meta Platforms,

2:54

which owns Instagram. The video game

2:56

company Activision, which makes the popular

2:58

game Call of Duty, and

3:01

Daniel Defense, which made the AR-15

3:03

style rifle used in the massacre.

3:05

That accuse a video game company

3:07

and one of the biggest social

3:10

media platforms and a

3:12

gun manufacturer of essentially grooming the

3:14

gunman. These are really some of

3:16

the most far reaching to be filed yet in

3:18

response to these escalating number of mass shootings in

3:20

the US. And they're

3:22

really the brainchild of this one lawyer.

3:29

Hello. Hi, guys. Can you hear me? Yeah.

3:31

How are you? Good. Good. Hi, David. How are

3:34

you? And tell me about this lawyer. Well,

3:36

his name is Josh Koskoff. He's 57 years old. He's

3:40

based in Connecticut. And for most

3:42

of his career practicing law, he's

3:44

been a medical malpractice attorney, a

3:46

personal injury attorney. The way

3:48

I got into the

3:51

gun litigation was really by

3:53

total accident and happenstance. And

3:56

he really had no experience trying gun

3:58

cases at all. Does

4:00

he actually go from making the leap to representing

4:02

some of the families here? Well,

4:05

the way he makes this transition starts

4:08

well before Yvalde, basically 10 years

4:10

earlier. Well, I'm

4:12

about 20 miles from Sandy Hook. It

4:15

starts with the school shooting at Sandy

4:17

Hook. And he

4:19

essentially gets involved by accident. Tell

4:21

me how you got approached about the Sandy Hook case. I

4:24

was getting a ride to the airport, and

4:26

the driver asked me what I did for a

4:29

living, and I told him that I was a lawyer.

4:32

And he said, oh really, boy, do

4:34

I have a friend who really needs a lawyer? He

4:37

said that his friend had just

4:39

lost a child at Sandy Hook. He

4:42

had a conversation with a cab driver who ended

4:44

up connecting him with one of the Sandy Hook

4:46

families. At the time, I wasn't really thinking

4:48

about a lawsuit. I was simply thinking about, could

4:51

I help these people get through probate? Could

4:53

I help them manage the press, which was

4:55

all of that. He's been a medical malpractice

4:57

attorney. He can help in terms of the

4:59

basic law after someone's lost someone. But

5:02

I started to get to know

5:04

these families, and I started to

5:06

see tremendous shattering loss,

5:10

which left them sort of looking for

5:12

answers. And

5:15

as he's trying to figure out the strategy, he

5:17

comes across photos of the crime

5:19

scene that the police have released. And

5:22

I saw a photograph of the weapon

5:24

on the floor of this classroom, and

5:26

I just asked the question, how did

5:28

it get here? And

5:31

so that sort of began a long odyssey

5:33

of trying to... So he

5:35

starts to think about the kinds of

5:37

liability that might exist here. And

5:40

as he starts looking into this... I

5:42

knew nothing about guns as

5:45

a product, and I knew even

5:47

less about gun litigation. I didn't know anything

5:49

about the law of guns. I just assumed

5:52

you could sue a gun company for being

5:54

negligent. I thought you could sue them for

5:56

selling a product that was unreasonably dangerous. Like

6:00

any legal action, you can hold a company

6:02

liable for the way that their product is

6:04

used or misused. Only to learn that actually

6:07

this industry is uniquely protected

6:10

by the federal government. And

6:12

so he ends up discovering that there's this 2005 law, the

6:16

Protection of Lawful Commerce and Arms Act, often

6:18

referred to as PACA. And I read one

6:20

case and I thought, what

6:23

is this? PLCAA. And

6:27

I looked it up and I read the

6:29

statute and I genuinely

6:31

thought it was not constitutional. So

6:38

what this law does is really give arms

6:40

makers, gun manufacturers, a broad set of protections

6:42

against being sued for the way their weapons

6:44

are used to cause harm. You know, the

6:46

sort of harm that occurs all the time

6:48

in this country. And most

6:50

lawyers come to the conclusion that this

6:52

all but slams the door shut on

6:54

the courts when it comes to bringing

6:56

legal cases against gun makers for these

6:58

mass shootings. And worst of all,

7:01

the gun industry was perceiving it

7:04

as an absolute immunity. And

7:07

the perception of being immune

7:09

from civil liability and having

7:11

to pay damages for

7:14

harms or deaths that are created when

7:16

you sell guns is a very dangerous

7:18

perception. Okay,

7:20

so Kostkov is considering suing the company

7:22

that made this gun that was used

7:24

in Sandy Hook and he runs up

7:26

against this wall of protection that's unique

7:28

to the gun industry, PLCAA. Which,

7:31

does this make him think twice? Well,

7:35

not exactly. You know, he

7:37

didn't really even know

7:39

enough to have that attitude.

7:41

He sort of felt like this was the right

7:44

thing to do and he was going to keep

7:46

going with it. So what

7:48

he ends up doing with this case

7:50

is taking advantage of an exception to

7:52

the federal law. So the law is

7:54

the protection of lawful commerce in ARMS

7:56

Act. What he correctly notices

7:59

is that It does not protect

8:01

unlawful commerce. And so what

8:03

he tries to do is prove that

8:05

the company in the Sandy Hook shooting,

8:07

Remington, has done illegal marketing, you know,

8:09

has essentially violated a Connecticut consumer law.

8:12

Okay. So basically he's arguing, Hey, Remington

8:14

broke this other law, so they

8:16

should not be protected by Placa. Right.

8:19

And does that work? It does. And

8:23

so, you know, one of the things that he points to

8:26

is that these advertisements

8:28

that were aimed at regular people that

8:31

played up the guns, military connections and

8:33

their combat readiness. And he basically argues

8:35

that this was an unlawful promotion

8:38

because in the military guns are used

8:41

to wage war and kill people. I mean, there's

8:43

a lot of legal back and forth, but you

8:45

know, eventually the suit survives the company's attempts to

8:47

get it thrown out, which in

8:49

and of itself is really a remarkable feat. And

8:52

so then they go into this phase where the company has to

8:54

turn over documents as part of the lawsuit. It's

8:56

as if they were selling widgets, but they're

8:58

talking about AR 15. So what they're trying

9:00

to do in this time period of the

9:02

Sandy Hook shooting was they're

9:05

trying to reach and expand

9:07

the AR 15 market to

9:09

target youth as

9:11

potential future customers. They call

9:13

the target an end user. So

9:16

what he's able to see in these

9:18

documents that are turned over are, you

9:20

know, internal company discussions about marketing weapons.

9:22

And he sees that this company is

9:24

trying very hard to reach a younger

9:26

audience. We see in

9:29

the documentation questions like what

9:31

kind of problems do they have? Is

9:34

it a man, a woman or a

9:36

kid? Who are we trying to reach? And

9:39

why does he think they need to

9:41

reach this younger audience? Because they

9:43

need to win that audience

9:45

to sell their products. You

9:47

know, this is like any other item in

9:50

a market that's very competitive. And in order

9:52

to get new customers, you need to go

9:54

get them when they're young. You need to

9:57

develop a brand loyalty early on. We saw

9:59

this effort. reflected in

10:01

the documentation that we were able to

10:03

obtain. They were very

10:05

intentional efforts to reach

10:08

these kids through Call of Duty. In

10:10

fact, the records show that Remington, the gun

10:12

manufacturer, had actually made a deal with Activision,

10:14

the makers of Call of Duty, to get

10:16

one of their products featured in the game.

10:19

And it was widely reported that the Sandy Hook shooter was

10:21

an avid player of Call of Duty. Oh

10:23

wow, interesting. So how did they actually make use

10:26

of that information in court? At this point, all

10:28

that information is really locked up in

10:30

the lawsuit. It won't be made public until the

10:32

trial. But before that

10:34

ever happens, the company Remington is

10:37

in financial trouble and is

10:40

essentially bankrupt, and its insurers

10:42

are the ones negotiating

10:44

with the lawyers at this point. And

10:47

they agree to a settlement to end this lawsuit.

10:49

So does that mean they won? Well,

10:52

it's a win for the families. They got

10:54

$73 million. In

10:57

a free market where corporate

10:59

conduct is often motivated by greed

11:02

and people lose their moral

11:04

compass, the only way

11:06

to correct that conduct

11:09

and to protect the public is

11:11

by hitting them in the pocketbook.

11:14

I mean, this was the biggest settlement

11:16

by a gun manufacturer for a

11:19

mass shooting that we've yet seen. But

11:21

he didn't actually test these arguments at trial.

11:24

So there was never a final verdict on

11:26

the arguments that he was putting forth. After

11:31

the settlement happens, he really felt like this

11:33

was the end for him with these kinds

11:35

of cases. I didn't know that I would

11:38

be the, quote, mass shooting lawyer, unquote. It

11:40

was something I never anticipated.

11:43

But then just a few months later, after

11:45

they settle the Sandy Hook case, a

11:48

gunman walks in to Rob Elementary School

11:50

in Yuvalde, Texas. And

11:53

Yuvalde was like Sandy

11:55

Hook 2.0 with

11:58

even more outrageous.