Skip to content
Navigating a New Political Landscape: View real-time updates about the impact of and Northeastern’s response to recent political changes.
Apply
Stories

Here’s how the $73M Sandy Hook settlement against a gunmaker could prompt more suits

Photo by Lisa Wiltse/Getty Images

A unique settlement that pays $73 million to the families of Sandy Hook school shooting victims is influencing the way guns are marketed in the United States—and may inspire lawsuits in other industries, including social media, according to Northeastern law professor Richard Daynard.

“At the Public Health Advocacy Institute, we’re interested in seeing whether cases can be brought and how to bring them,” says Daynard, who serves as president of the institute. “This may well reinvigorate investigations by lawyers and public-interest groups around the country into the use of state consumer-protection laws to protect people from a variety of corporate misdeeds.”

The largest known settlement by a gunmaker involved in a mass shooting followed a legal strategy by the families of nine victims that hinged on Connecticut consumer law. The families showed that Remington Arms, which is now bankrupt, marketed its AR-15-style rifle to appeal to vulnerable people like the 20-year-old Sandy Hook killer, who killed 20 first-graders and six adults in the 2012 elementary school attack. “The strength of the case was that Remington pitched these guns to teenage boys as a way to show their manhood,” Daynard says.

The families focused on the marketing of the weapon because the gun industry is protected by the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which shields gunmakers from lawsuits that are based on how their firearms have been used.

Continue reading at News@Northeastern.

More Stories

As states like Russia and China deploy new assets into space, cooperation between the world’s superpowers is of critical importance to peaceful relations on Earth.

As growth in the space economy accelerates, U.S. leadership remains critical, report outlines

03.11.2025
President Donald Trump addresses a joint session of Congress at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, March 4, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

5 key takeaways from Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress

03.04.2025
A hand holds up an iPhone with social media apps on the screen.

Is social media making you more irritable? New research takes a granular look at users’ moods

03.12.25
All Stories