Over 1,000 victims from the 2017 Las Vegas massacre are being sued by MGM Resorts International as a way for the company to fend off any liability claims from the mass shooting, Newsweek reports.
Mandalay Bay Hotel owners have asserted they can’t be held accountable for the multiple deaths and injuries last October, when gunman Stephen Paddock rented a room and subsequently opened fire at people attending the Route 91 Harvest country music festival. They added that all claims made against them “must be dismissed,” per the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Complaints from Nevada and California state that the company—which owns the music festival location—took acceptable actions to prevent a situation like the shooting, and it doesn’t bear responsibility for “liability of any kind to defendants.”
Hundreds of lawsuits have been placed against the company since the shooting, which left 58 people dead and more than 850 injured. The suits allege the company was careless and did a poor job of overseeing who entered and exited the building. Because of that, Paddock was able to hole up in a room with an armory of guns and ammunition.
Las Vegas attorney Robert Eglet, who is working with a number of the victims, views the company's lawsuits as a “blatant display of judge shopping” that “quite frankly verges on unethical.”
“I’ve never seen a more outrageous thing, where they sue the victims in an effort to find a judge they like,” Eglet told the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level.”
However, MGM spokeswoman Debra DeShong told 8 News Now:
The Las Vegas mass shooting has been recorded as the most deadly in modern U.S. history.