The owner of a Colorado movie theater could not have predicted the 2012 shooting that left 12 people dead, a jury decided Thursday, (RJ Sangosti/The Denver Post via AP)CENTENNIAL, Colo.
Advertisement
Christina Habas, an attorney on the upcoming case against Cinemark, declined to comment except to say the case will go on as planned.
In the meantime, several victims have filed complaints against the Colorado Department of Corrections.
Jurors on Thursday quickly sided with the nation’s third-largest movie theater chain, finding there was no way the company could have safeguarded against the attack and is not responsible for victims’ life-altering injuries that require psychiatric care, medical equipment, prosthetic limbs, occupational and speech therapy, and other treatment.
Lawyers for the plaintiffs argued that Cinemark and its co-defendants, the theater’s property owners, should be held liable for various security lapses which they said had contributed to the tragedy at the Century 16 Theater multiplex in Aurora, Colorado. There also was no silent alarm that would have sounded when Holmes slipped into an auditorium and started shooting.
Cinemark attorney Kevin Taylor said he sympathizes with the victims but that justice was done when gunman James Holmes was convicted past year.
But the jury in the civil trial ruled unanimously that Cinemark had no reason to expect a mass shooting was imminent. The verdict is scheduled to be announced at 11:30 a.m. He fatally shot 12 people and injured dozens more in the movie-theater rampage.
But such cases are exceedingly hard to prove, as mass violence is difficult to predict, even for mental health professionals, said John Lott, president of the Crime Prevention Research Center. Jurors must determine whether Cinemark should have foreseen the risk for violence during the packed midnight premiere of a Batman movie in an era of mass shootings.
Cinemark argued that nothing could have stopped the armor-clad Holmes.
Advertisement
Holmes, a graduate school dropout, was sentenced in July of last year 12 life sentences and 3,317 years in prison without the chance of parole.
