HARTFORD, Conn. (Reuters) - A lawyer for families who lost loved ones in the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting told Connecticut’s highest court on Tuesday that Remington Outdoor Co [FREDM.UL] should be held responsible because its military-themed marketing was designed to appeal to young men like killer Adam Lanza. 
 
 “They knew they were hitting their mark and Lanza was responding to their marketing,” said lawyer Joshua Koskoff 
 
 Lanza, 20, used a Remington AR-15 Bushmaster rifle, a semi-automatic civilian version of the U.S. military’s M-16, to kill 20 school children between the ages of 6 and 7, as well as six adult staff members, at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, on Dec. 14, 2012. He then killed himself. 
 
 Following the conclusion Tuesday’s arguments, the Connecticut Supreme Court will now decide whether the families of nine of the victims and one survivor can proceed with a trial seeking to hold Remington, along with a gun wholesaler and local retailer, responsible for the carnage based on its marketing. 
 
 A representative for the court declined to say when it would rule. 
 
 The families are advancing a somewhat novel legal argument in hopes of overcoming a federal law enacted by U.S. Congress in 2005 to shield gun manufacturers from liability for how their products are used. 
 
 Remington’s lawyer, James Vogts, told the Connecticut court that the families’ claims, first filed in 2014, are barred by the 2005 law. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Street artist Mark Panzarino, 41, prepares a memorial as he writes the names of the Sandy Hook Elementary School victims during the six-month anniversary of the massacre, at Union Square in New York, June 14, 2013. REUTERS/Eduardo Munoz/File Photo 
 
 “What happened in the school that morning was horrific,” Vogts said. “But no matter how much we wished those children and teachers were still alive, the law needs to be applied.” 
 
 A lower court judge agreed with the gun maker and dismissed the families’ lawsuit in 2016. But the Connecticut Supreme Court agreed to hear the case a week after the families filed their first appeal. 
 
 The packed courtroom in Hartford, Connecticut, included many of the victims’ family members. Ian Hockley, who lost his 6-year-old son, Dylan, in the shooting, told reporters after the proceeding that families were “running out of patience” over the gun maker’s ability to escape liability. 
 
 “But we have not lost one ounce of confidence in the validity of our case,” he said. 
 
 The families claim Remington and the other defendants “extolled the militaristic and assaultive qualities” of the AR-15, advertising the rifle as “mission-adaptable” and “the ultimate combat weapons system” in a deliberate pitch to a demographic of young men fascinated by the military. 
 
 The families said Lanza was part of that demographic and cited media reports saying he previously expressed a desire to join the army. The rifle was bought by Lanza’s mother, whom he also killed, as a gift for him or for the two of them to share, the lawsuit claims. 
 
 The families’ argument is based on the legal doctrine of negligent entrustment, in which a product is carelessly sold or given to a person at high risk of using it in a harmful way. Negligent entrustment is specifically excepted from the 2005 gun maker shield laws. 
 
 FILE PHOTO: Mourners hold signs during a solidarity vigil in memory of victims of Las Vegas' Route 91 Harvest music festival mass killing, in Newtown, Connecticut U.S., the site of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting, October 4, 2017. REUTERS/Michelle McLoughlin/File Photo 
 
 The argument has historically been used where someone lends a car to a high-risk driver who goes on to cause an accident. It has met with some success in lawsuits against gun shop owners, but legal experts said it has never been used before to target a manufacturer. 
 
 David Studdert, a Stanford law professor, said on Monday he thought negligent entrustment was a tough argument for the families to make because it has traditionally involved someone having direct knowledge that another person poses a risk. 
 
 If the Sandy Hook families are successful, Timothy Lytton, a law professor at Georgia State University, said on Monday he would expect the U.S. Supreme Court to take up the case. ||||| Parents of some of the victims of the 2012 school shooting in Sandy Hook, Connecticut, will on Monday announce they are suing Bushmaster, the manufacturer of the gun used by Adam Lanza. 
 
 They are working with an attorney who represented Michael Jackson’s family in a $1.5bn wrongful death lawsuit against his international concert promoter, and a Democratic lobbyist who worked in the Clinton administration and specialises in taking on major corporations, the Guardian has learned. 
 
 
 
 Parents of at least 13 of the 20 young children killed in the December 2012 shooting have in the past two weeks opened estates in their names at the regional probate court, a necessary first step in filing a lawsuit over their deaths. Eleven of these sets of parents checked a box specifying that they intended to make a wrongful death claim. 
 
 Sunday 14 December, the second anniversary of the killings, also marks the legal deadline for filing a wrongful death lawsuit over the incident in the civil courts. The Hartford Courant reported earlier this week that parents were discussing a legal action against Bushmaster, the North Carolina-based manufacturer of the AR-15 rifle that was used by Lanza. 
 
 Asked whether notice of a lawsuit had been received, an employee in the legal department of Remington Outdoor Company, Bushmaster’s parent firm, referred the inquiry to the company’s public affairs director, who then did not respond to numerous emails, phone calls and voicemails this week seeking comment. 
 
 The Guardian has confirmed that action is to be announced on Monday involving Michael Koskoff, a partner in the Connecticut law firm Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder, who three years ago represented the Jackson family in their unsuccessful lawsuit against AEG Live, the promoter of a planned tour for which Jackson was rehearsing when he died in 2009. 
 
 Joining his firm in promoting the action is Karen Hinton, a lobbyist and PR expert who once worked for the Democratic National Committee and is a close ally of Andrew Cuomo, the governor of New York, who described her as “my public relations guru” in his 2003 book Crossroads: the Future of American Politics. 
 
 
 
 Hinton worked for Cuomo when he was housing secretary to then president Bill Clinton in the 1990s and is married to Howard Glaser, who was until earlier this year one of Cuomo’s most senior aides. 
 
 “We are not going to be speaking about that until Monday,” Hinton said of Sandy Hook, declining to confirm what the parents’ plans were. 
 
 Hinton, who states in her Twitter biography that she is “taking on big oil, big banks & other big bullies”, has represented clients including Ecuadorian villagers in a long-running multibillion-dollar legal battle with Chevron, the energy corporation, over pollution of the Amazon rainforest. 
 
 According to records reviewed by the Guardian at Fairfield county probate court, estates were opened with notifications of wrongful death claims this month for Charlotte Bacon, Daniel Barden, Dylan Hockley, Jesse Lewis, Ana Marquez-Greene, James Mattioli, Grace McDonnell, Emilie Parker, Jack Pinto, Noah Pozner and Jessica Rekos. Estates were also opened for Avielle Richman and Benjamin Wheeler, but the box signifying a wrongful death claim was not checked. ||||| The state Supreme Court will hear arguments on Nov. 14 in the closely watched case involving the families of victims of the Sandy Hook massacre who are suing the gun manufacturer that makes the weapon used in the shootings. 
 
 The families of 10 victims filed the lawsuit in January 2015, seeking to hold the Remington Outdoor Co. liable for the massacre because it marketed a gun to the public it knew was made for military use. 
 
 Adam Lanza shot his way into the Newtown school on Dec. 14, 2012, and fired 154 bullets in about five minutes from a Bushmaster AR-15, killing 26 people, including 20 first-graders. 
 
 The lawsuit also named Camfour Holding LLP, the gun’s distributor, and Riverview Gun Sales Inc., the East Windsor gun shop where Nancy Lanza, Adam's mother, bought the AR-15. 
 
 But the lawsuit was dismissed by Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, forcing the families to appeal to the state’s highest court. 
 
 In her written ruling, Bellis agreed with attorneys for Remington that the lawsuit "falls squarely within the broad immunity" provided to gun manufacturers and dealers by federal law, specifically the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. She dismissed the case against Remington and Camfour. 
 
 Stan Godlewski/Special to the Courant Attorney Josh Koskoff, with the families of those who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, holds a press conference at the Law Office of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport before a superior court hearing on their lawsuit against gun maker Remington. Attorney Josh Koskoff, with the families of those who were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School, holds a press conference at the Law Office of Koskoff, Koskoff & Bieder in Bridgeport before a superior court hearing on their lawsuit against gun maker Remington. (Stan Godlewski/Special to the Courant) 
 
 The case has drawn national attention as both the National Rifle Association and anti-gun groups have filed briefs in the case. It is the latest case and most high profile case to challenge the federal law protecting gun manufacturers, which was approved by Congress. 
 
 The families’ attorneys are hoping a case involving a slingshot injury in Michigan will help them prove that one of the largest gun manufacturers in the world negligently entrusted the AR-15 to Lanza, even though he didn't actually purchase it, and help them overcome PLCAA’s strict language favoring the gun manufacturers. 
 
 The case in Michigan was a 1977 lawsuit by the family of a 12-year-old against a company that manufactured slingshots. The boy was injured when he was struck in the eye by a pellet fired from a slingshot that ricocheted off a tree. The court allowed the case to go before a jury, ruling that the company entrusted the slingshot to a class of people, in this case younger children, that made the ultimate accident foreseeable. 
 
 In the Sandy Hook case, the families’ attorney, Josh Koskoff, argued that instead of a slingshot, Remington used marketing and product placement to purposefully target a “younger demographic of users” interested in the most dangerous and lethal use of their weapon. ||||| A lawsuit filed Monday by 10 Sandy Hook victims’ families claims Adam Lanza would not have been able to kill 26 people in five minutes without his “weapon of choice,” a Bushmaster AR-15. 
 
 “The number of lives lost in those 264 seconds was made possible” by the rifle that was “engineered to deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency,” according to the lawsuit against AR-15 manufacturer Bushmaster. 
 
 The lawsuit was filed Monday morning in Connecticut superior court against Bushmaster, several other manufacturers, and Riverview Gun Sales, where Lanza’s rifle was purchased. 
 
 These defendants know that “as a result of selling AR-15s to the civilian market, individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them... Despite that knowledge, defendants continue to sell the XM15-E52 rifle to the civilian market.” 
 
 In making the case against any civilian sales of AR-15s, the plaintiffs say—among other things—“there is not a single state that requires a mental-health examination of a potential purchaser of an AR-15” or to “answer questions about other individuals with whom they intend to share access.” 
 
 The reference is unmistakably to Nancy Lanza, who purchased the AR-15 that her son would use to massacre 20 first-grade students and six adults before taking his own life. 
 
 Under the title “The Road to Sandy Hook,” the lawsuit painstakingly details the use of the AR-15 in other mass shootings, including those at schools. Yet Bushmaster continued to market the AR-15 as a weapon that would make others “bow down” and kept selling high-capacity magazines with it. 
 
 After recounting the individual lives taken by Lanza and his Bushmaster AR-15, the lawsuit says the defendants “knew, or should have known” that the sale of the AR-15 “posed an unreasonable and egregious risk of physical injury to others.” In addition, it should’ve known it would’ve been used in a mass shooting to inflict maximum casualties. 
 
 The families created estates in their childrens’ names (with parents as administrators) so they could sue on behalf of the victims. Bushmaster and the other defendants’ conduct, the plaintiffs say, was a “substantial factor resulting in the following injuries and losses.” They are listed for the dead as “terror; ante-mortem pain and suffering; destruction of the ability to enjoy life’s activities; destruction of earning capacity, and death.” 
 
 The plaintiffs claim damages in excess of $15,000 and seek further relief for monetary damages, puntitive damages, attorneys’ fees, costs, and injunctive relief.
– Two years ago yesterday, Adam Lanza walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and fired 154 bullets in less than five minutes, killing 20 small children and six educators. Today, the families of nine of the victims, along with a wounded teacher who survived, have filed suit against the maker of Lanza's "weapon of choice," the Bushmaster AR-15, reports the Daily Beast. "The number of lives lost in those 264 seconds was made possible" by the AR-15, which was "engineered to deliver maximum carnage with extreme efficiency," reads the lawsuit; also named are Remington and Riverview Gun Sales, which sold Lanza's weapon. The suit faults the gunmakers for making such rifles available "to the civilian market" despite knowing that "individuals unfit to operate these weapons gain access to them." Per the suit, Bushmaster's actions caused the plaintiffs "terror; ante-mortem pain and suffering; destruction of the ability to enjoy life’s activities; destruction of earning capacity, and death." The families of 13 victims had in recent weeks created estates for their children, a required step in filing suit, reports the Guardian, which notes not all of those families intended to sue. They are represented by the same lawyer who represented Michael Jackson's family against AEG Live. Despite calls for increased gun control in the wake of the Newtown tragedy, Reuters notes that school shootings remain largely unchecked, with 95 fatal and nonfatal incidents over the last two years. Meanwhile, Nicole Hockley, mother of Dylan Hockley and one of the parents who sued, has written a letter to the mother she used to be.