DENVER (Legal Newsline) – Victims of a mass shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado can sue the facility, a divided state Supreme Court has ruled.
In proceedings closely watched by plaintiffs lawyers, the defense bar and legal reform groups, the court on June 8 ruled against Rocky Mountain Planned Parenthood – the site of a shooting that left three people dead and nine injured in 2015.
“Indeed, PPRM had taken some measures to protect against the known and escalating threats of violence at its facilities, although the plaintiffs introduced evidence to show that these measures were insufficient and that other reasonable measures could have prevented the plaintiffs’ injuries and deaths,” the ruling states.
“On these facts, we cannot preclude, as a matter of law, the possibility that a reasonable jury could find PPRM’s allegedly insufficient security measures to have been a substantial factor in causing the plaintiffs’ injuries, even given the magnitude of (Robert) Dear’s premeditated efforts to cause mass casualties without regard for his own survival or capture.”
Dear killed one police officer and two civilians and injured five officers and four civilians on Nov. 27, 2015, when he began shooting at a Planned Parenthood in Colorado Springs. He had seen videos of staff discussing how to obtain fetal organs and tissue for medical research and how much they could sell them from.
After the shooting, which featured an hours-long standoff with cops, he was deemed incompetent to stand trial and was confined to a mental hospital. This past December, he was indicted on separate federal charges.
Dear called himself a “warrior for the babies.” Survivors and family members of victims have filed a lawsuit under the Colorado Premises Liability Act, alleging PPRM had a duty to provide a safe and secure environment “free from foreseeable risks and dangerous conditions.”
They also claimed the facility was negligent in not meeting certain safety goals. The trial court found that Dear’s actions were unforeseeable because no violent crime had ever happened at the facility and granted summary judgment to PPRM.
That decision, though, was reversed by the state Court of Appeals. Plaintiffs successfully argued to that court that PPRM knew for many years there was a risk of violence against its facilities and even offered to provide physicians with free bulletproof vests.
Justice Melissa Hart wrote a partial dissent that was joined by two other justices. She says the majority misstated settled Colorado law on causation.
“As a result, the majority makes ‘proximate cause’ a determination solely of the foreseeability of a particular event—in this case a mass shooting—occurring at a particular location,” she wrote.
“The dangerous consequence of this move is to subject a landowner to liability for the irrational actions of a mass murderer, who has no concern about detection or death.
“And, while the majority asserts that its approach does not turn on the politically controversial nature of the landowner’s business, I fear that in fact the majority is creating the equivalent of a heckler’s veto—if a business owner receives threats of violence because of the nature of his business, the business owner will be subject to a risk of liability that could render his business uninsurable or require impossibly expensive fortifications. “
Among the groups filing amicus briefs were the American Tort Reform Association, the Colorado Civil Justice League, the Colorado Defense Lawyers Association and the Colorado Trial Lawyers Association.