Take Note

There's a sound business reason for Remington to be offering $33 million to the Sandy Hook families despite doing nothing culpable in the murders.

It's CHEAPER than taking the fight all the way to a judgement in their favor.

Winning a lawsuit is a Pyrric victory most of the time.

But let's look at this again.

$33,000,000.00 is cheaper than going to court, litigating, getting a verdict, and repeating this process through all of the appeals.

It's especially galling that the lawyers for the plaintiffs have flat stated that their litigation is entirely based on the idea of making the process the punishment and forcing gun makers to stop making AR pattern guns.

Those are just the target of the day.  Other types of guns will be next if this succeeds.

Why?  Precedent.

Despite the fact that there's not supposed to be an admission of guilt with a settlement, it's always taken as such.  Just like pleading the 5th.

Remington is left with the unpalatable position of taking one for the team and losing their shirts fighting this to the end, or doing a settlement to be done with it because that shirt is very threadbare after going bankrupt.

I really think they should have said "fuck it" and stayed in to fight to the death.

Someone needs to.  This suit is in violation of the 1st amendment, the PLCAA should have nuked this at filing, and (even if it didn't violate the first two things) it should have been killed by the bankruptcy.

It's not even clear which Remington is being sued and which Remington is offering $33 million.  Is it current Remington, which did not exist in 2012; or the bankrupt and disbanded remnants of Remington checking off the last few boxes as it ceases to exist?

Every gun maker is going to be faced with an identical suit from now on every time one of their guns is used in a murder because A judge decided that PLCAA did not apply to advertising and that free speech isn't a thing.

Precedent. 

In the long term, this sound business decision to settle rather than fight is a poor decision.  But it seems that nobody can look past the next shareholder's meeting.