An example of what's wrong with American tort law. The Las Vegas Shooting. . .let the tort cases begin.

An email list on legal events in Texas reports that a lawsuit has already been filed stemming from the recent shooting in Las Vegas. That story reported:

The plaintiff, a California college student who was wounded in the Oct. 1 Las Vegas mass shooting, has sued the hotel, the concert promoter, a gun accessory manufacturer and the estate of the alleged shooter.

Okay, I agree that an suit exists against the estate of the shooter. That's clear.  Indeed, that suit will be completely depleted in payouts due to such suits, I'm sure.

But as to "the hotel, the concert promoter, a gun accessory manufacturer". . . . hmmmm.

I suppose, in the heated climate we're now in, a person can argue about the bump stock manufacture, but I find that a rather dubious argument.  It's like arguing that the manufacturer of a hot car used in a robbery is liable for theft.  Or should the entire alcohol industry be liable for violence in the United States in general, given as it so strongly associated with all types of it?  Maybe the American Psychiatric Association should be liable for darned near everything in the United States by excusing all known conduct of every type and categorizing everything as something that you need a fluffy bunny for.

But the hotel?

Give me a break.

And the same with the concert promoter.

Bull.

Indeed, on the latter, the story is that the promoter had pretty good security in place.  Concert attendees weren't allowed to enter with arms. That would, in some circumstances, open up the debate about concealed arms, and one of the members of one of the bands did make a rather dim comment along those lines in favor of gun control to the effect that their concealed arms back in the bus did not good (no kidding, by the same line of reasoning the New Jersey State Highway Patrol also did no good, as they weren't there).  Anyhow, you'd sometimes seen an argument here that if only the attendees had been carrying concealed arms this wouldn't have happened or wouldn't have been as bad as it was, but no concealed handgun is going to be effective from somebody so distant shooting from an elevated position, obviously.  That doesn't mean of course that more concealed arms in something like the Florida terrorist attack from awhile back, and it was a terrorist attack, wouldn't have been quite helpful.  Anyhow, the suggestion that the concert promoters are supposed to anticipate this scenario is stupid.   The fact that lawyers advance such claims is not helpful.

Nor is blaming the hotel. Granted, I earlier wondered how on earth, and I still don't have an answer, this fellow got so many arms up in a hotel room. That's weird. But is it negligent?  It''s surprising, but I don't think it's negligent in any sense.  It''ll only be actionable properly, in my view, if the shooter had an accomplice on the hotel staff, and even that wouldn't normally be actionable as that would clearly be an improper act outside of his employment.  Unless we have a development here that we don't know about yet, I don't see it.

Which doesn't mean these things don't have an impact.

This is horrible, but we shouldn't litigate ourselves into a situation in which concerts can only be held in Death Valley and viewed by an audience that's largely naked or something.  Nor should we create a situation where you have to go through a metal detector in order to enter your hotel.  For that matter, hotels shouldn't be required to disarm their guests, I've been in plenty of hotels where I wished I might have a little personal backup quite frankly and I have experienced entries into my own residences, in prior places I lived, more than twice.  Self help can be a good thing in the real world.

Recently in some depositions a break occurred in which the Plaintiff's lawyer began to wax philosophic about our occupation and muse about how much we (lawyers) operated to change things, listing some. The only one I can recall is windows in Confessionals (which is a development I detest).  He then went on to note how much our occupation had improved things, and to ask "don't you agree?".  I replied "I don't think that at all".

We have, I think.

But the profession hurts things too. Stuff like this provides an example of the mechanism by which we do that.