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Sandy Hook settlement

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By your logic, a hit man has no responsibility for murdering somebody. Only the person who hired the hit man has.
 
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psionl0 said:
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By your logic, a hit man has no responsibility for murdering somebody. Only the person who hired the hit man has.
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You don't know much about how high-end games like "Call of Duty" are written do you. Let me give you some clues...

The CEO (Bobby Kotick) doesn't write them,
The CFO (Armin Zerza) doesn't write them,
The Chairman of the board of Directors (Brian Kelly) doesn't write them,
The Lead Independent Director (Robert Morgado) doesn't write them,
The Directors (Reveta Bowers, Robert Corti, Hendrick Hartong, Barry Meyer, Peter Nolan, Dawn Ostroff and Casey Wasserman ) don't write them either

No, they are written a number of the other 9000+ "low ranking employees" of Activision known as coders (sometimes called "code ninjas", or less respectfully, "code monkies")

In any case it none of this actually matters because the whole premise of your argument isn't just wrong, its wronger than wrong. It is an irrefutable, demonstrable fact that there is one, and only one person/entity/group/company/corporation that is legally responsible if their advertisement breaks the law, the advertiser. No-one else.

The carrier of the advertisement, all the way from the carrier company's CEO, right down to the office junior are never legally responsible. You might not like personally like this fact (and I personally don't give a fat rat's arse what you like) nonetheless it is what it is!

Build a ******* bridge!
 
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theprestige said:
Doesn't seem ridiculous to me. In fact I think you both make a very good point: Publishers of objectionable ads should bear some of the responsibility for publishing the ad, alongside the advertiser who paid them for the publication.
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Its a matter of what the Law says, and this ALL I am arguing

You are entitled to have your own opinion about whether that is just or not, but you are not entitled to claim the Law says something different than is actually does (which is what psion1O is doing)

I 100% agree with what the Laws say right now, that only the advertiser is accountable.

theprestige said:
In fact now I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario where a mercenary who accepted money to do evil on behalf of another wouldn't be equally complicit in the evil done.
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I'm not. You're posting in a thread about one right now.

The judge ruled that the advertiser met the two conditions that resulted in them breaking the law and his ruling allowed the lawsuit to proceed

Remington made no attempt to fob this off on Activision. If there was any way they could have done that, don't you think they would have tried?
 
theprestige said:
Doesn't seem ridiculous to me. In fact I think you both make a very good point: Publishers of objectionable ads should bear some of the responsibility for publishing the ad, alongside the advertiser who paid them for the publication.

In fact now I'm having a hard time imagining a scenario where a mercenary who accepted money to do evil on behalf of another wouldn't be equally complicit in the evil done.
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If you advertise a whitening toothpaste it’s not up to the paper to check the fda regs to make sure you have the right percentage of the right ingredients to make that whitening claim. There are a lot of restrictions in every field relating to advertising.

Papers would have to be experts in every field to know what is allowable and what isn’t.

Something obviously illegal, like prostitution, would be different.

I can see how it may not be obvious to the game makers that this was an issue. It should have been foreseeable to Remington’s counsel that this could open opportunities for litigants. But I can see why they didn’t see it.
 
The important thing here is that we shift accountability away from those who actually commit the crimes. Somebody has to pay, after all...even if the perp is dead.
 
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Warp12 said:
The important thing here is that we shift accountability away from those who actually commit the crimes. Somebody has to pay, after all...even if the perp is dead.
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Well in this case, the judge ruled, in effect, that Remington could have been an accomplice.


So, you come to me and say "I want to make a bomb so I can blow up that building over there", so I dictate to you a list of things you need to buy, and teach you now to make the bomb, and how to set the timer, and tell you where to plant it so that it won't be detected, and it goes off prematurely because you didn't listen to my timer setting instructions, and it brings the building down and kills hundreds of people, including you.

What is my culpability?

You bought all the bomb components
You made the bomb
You set the timer
You planted it
You're the perp, and you're dead!

Who's gonna pay?
 
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smartcooky said:
The carrier of the advertisement, all the way from the carrier company's CEO, right down to the office junior are never legally responsible.
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This is where your bush lawyering fails you.

It is a well established legal principle that a person can be held liable for the actions of their agents. Even if none of the employees in a company can be held liable for their actions in service of the company, the company itself can still be held liable. That is the whole point behind corporations. They can sue and be sued.
 
Warp12 said:
The important thing here is that we shift accountability away from those who actually commit the crimes. Somebody has to pay, after all...even if the perp is dead.
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Why can’t multiple entities be culpable?

You have a rare view of liability. I hope it stays such.
 
Dr. Keith said:
Why can’t multiple entities be culpable?
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They can and should if their actions can be shown to be a proximate cause of the crime.

The problem is that the secondary entity that ends up paying the financial damages invariably ends up being the entity with the most money. In this case it was the insurance company (Remington had already gone bankrupt).
 
Dr. Keith said:
If you advertise a whitening toothpaste it’s not up to the paper to check the fda regs to make sure you have the right percentage of the right ingredients to make that whitening claim. There are a lot of restrictions in every field relating to advertising.

Papers would have to be experts in every field to know what is allowable and what isn’t.

Something obviously illegal, like prostitution, would be different.

I can see how it may not be obvious to the game makers that this was an issue. It should have been foreseeable to Remington’s counsel that this could open opportunities for litigants. But I can see why they didn’t see it.
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I can't agree. If it should have been forseeable to Remington that a person using their product in an RPG was more likely to commit murder in real life then it should have been equally forseeable to the game makers.

Conversely, if an RPG is not likely to increase the probability of a player committing murder in real life then product placement shouldn't make a difference - especially in a gun happy country like the USA which has a limitless supply and variety of firearms.
 
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Warp12 said:
No doubt that every law firm in America agrees with you. Dolla, dolla bills, y'all.
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And most plaintiffs. Hope you are never injured by the negligence of multiple parties. You may twist your own neck off trying to straighten things out.
 
psionl0 said:
They can and should if their actions can be shown to be a proximate cause of the crime.

The problem is that the secondary entity that ends up paying the financial damages invariably ends up being the entity with the most money. In this case it was the insurance company (Remington had already gone bankrupt).
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Why is that a problem? They were insured against just this sort of risk.
 
psionl0 said:
I can't agree. If it should have been forseeable to Remington that a person using their product in an RPG was more likely to commit murder in real life then it should have been equally forseeable to the game makers.

Conversely, if an RPG is not likely to increase the probability of a player committing murder in real life then product placement shouldn't make a difference - especially in a gun happy country like the USA which has a limitless supply and variety of firearms.
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I don’t think your statements track the law or the courts findings very well. I’ll just say that game makers and gun makers face different risks. Advertisers and publishers have different standards for liability. What is foreseeable to one may not be blatantly obvious to the other.
 
smartcooky said:
I have posted the actual relevant laws. You chose to ignore them and go with your own opinion instead of the facts.
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The only "relevant" law you quoted was part of 15 USC § 7903 and even then it was strictly your own opinion that it only applied to the gun manufacturer and not the game manufacturer.

Maybe you genuinely believe that somebody should be able to be an enabler and get off scott free every time but that is not codified in law.
 
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psionl0 said:
The only "relevant" law you quoted was part of 15 USC § 7903 and even then it was strictly your own opinion that it only applied to the gun manufacturer and not the game manufacturer.
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Oh Dear, did you forget about this one (I have highlighted and bolded the parts you need to pay particular attention to).

Remington violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA), Conn. Gen. Stat. 42-110a et seq., by marketing the firearm to civilians for criminal purposes and that those wrongful marketing tactics contributed to the massacre.

Adam Lanza carried out the [Sandy Hook] massacre using a Remington Bushmaster XM15-E2S. The Supreme Court affirmed the trial court’s judgment that most of Plaintiffs’ claims were precluded by established Connecticut law and/or PLCAA. However, as to Plaintiffs’ claims that Defendants knowingly marketed, advertised, and promoted the XM15-E2S for civilians to use to carry out offensive, military style combat missions, the Supreme Court held that Plaintiffs pleaded allegations sufficient to survive a motion to strike because (1) PLCAA does not bar Plaintiffs’ wrongful marketing claims; and (2) to the extent that it prohibits the unethical advertising of dangerous products for illegal purposes, CUTPA qualifies as a predicate statute.

The Connecticut Law is ALL about the advertiser and NOT AT ALL about the carrier of the advertisement.

Remington (NOT Activision) are the company breaking Conn. Gen. Stat. 42-110a (and following) by knowingly marketing, advertising and promoting the weapon.

Remington (NOT Activision) are the company breaking Conn. Gen. Stat. 42-110a (and following) by unethically advertising dangerous products for illegal purposes.

Activision are not legally liable for any of this because the law does not say they are, because they are not the advertisers... only the advertisers are covered by the Act.

While the judge ruled that the lawsuit could proceed against Remington, Activision was nowhere mentioned, and Remington did not make any attempt (going right back to the very beginning when the lawsuit was first filed) to pass on, deflect or even share the blame with Activision.

I wonder why that would be? :rolleyes:

If you disagree, please point out where it says anything in the above summary from the lawsuit (the part in italics) about the carrier of the advertisement being liable?
 
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psionl0 said:
It is a problem because it is not about who is most culpable but who has the most money.
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It is about how culpable the party is. Remingtons insurers thought that Remington was at least that culpable. Regardless of who else is culpable.
 
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