MGM Resorts International, which owns the Mandalay Bay hotel where the killer rented a room on the 32nd floor and stockpiled a cache of weapons, announced the settlement, ending litigation that had become a closely watched test case about liability in mass shootings.
The killer, Stephen Paddock, holed up inside his room and fired into the crowd of thousands of music fans as the night’s final concert began. It was the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
Thursday’s settlement appears to resolve litigation that had raised novel and significant issues of law, including how much liability large companies and property owners could face after a mass-casualty attack.
While there is often litigation after mass shootings — such as lawsuits that parents filed against the companies that manufactured and sold the semi-automatic rifle used in the 2012 massacre at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut — legal experts said the scope and nature of the litigation and the legal issues raised in the MGM case were without precedent.
Robert Eglet, one of the lawyers for the victims, said Thursday that the settlement would be in the range of $735 million to $800 million and would cover “substantially all” of the lawsuits and claims against MGM related to the massacre.
Another lawyer for the plaintiffs, Craig Eiland, said that the settlement was expected to cover up to 4,500 people, which he said would include everything “from death cases all the way down to those who had PTSD.”
An independent claims administrator, who will need to be approved by a judge, will review medical bills and other expenses, as well as the circumstances of each victim, before deciding how much each will receive.
On Thursday, MGM’s chief executive, Jim Murren, called the agreement “a major step, and one that we hoped for a long time would be possible. We have always believed that prolonged litigation around these matters is in no one’s best interest.”
This article originally appeared in
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