MGM Resorts, the parent company of Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino, filed suit in federal court Tuesday against more than 1,000 victims of the October 2017 mass shooting, denying any responsibility for the shooting and claiming they did everything needed to prevent an “act of terrorism.”
The shocking lawsuit, according to the Las Vegas Review Journal, “argues that it cannot be held liable for Oct. 1 deaths, injuries or other damages, adding that any claims against MGM parties ‘must be dismissed.'”
The complaint alleges that MGM has “no liability of any kind” to anyone injured or killed when a gunman, who had turned his Mandalay Bay hotel room into an arsenal, opened fire from the hotel’s 32nd floor onto the Route 91 music festival below and across the street.
The shooter spent days bringing guns and ammunition into his suite and setting up a series of cameras to watch adjacent hallways, something victims feel the hotel should have noticed. Other reports indicate that security personnel warned hotel management of gunfire outside the shooter’s suite — gunfire which wounded a security guard — before the shooter open fire on the concert.
MGM claims, however, that they hired security personnel certified by the Department of Homeland Security to protect the festival, and under a federal statute enacted in 2002, that should be enough to shield them from liability for what was ultimately an unforseeable “act of terrorism.”
“The company cites a 2002 federal act that extends liability protection to any company that uses ‘anti-terrorism’ technology or services that can ‘help prevent and respond to mass violence,'” the Review-Journal reports. “In this case, the company argues, the security vendor MGM hired for Route 91, Contemporary Services Corp., was protected from liability because its services had been certified by the Department of Homeland Security for ‘protecting against and responding to acts of mass injury and destruction.'”
That protection, MGM says, extends to Mandalay Bay and to MGM as a whole.
Victims’ attorneys were, of course, outraged by MGM’s lawsuit. “I’ve never seen a more outrageous thing, where they sue the victims in an effort to find a judge they like,” one lawyer told local media. “It’s just really sad that they would stoop to this level.”