If MGM Just Sued You For Surviving, Read This First
If a lawyer’s letter arrived with MGM Resorts International’s letterhead saying the company that owned the hotel where the bullets came from is suing you for what Stephen Paddock did, that is not a mistake and it is not a technicality. It is a federal lawsuit MGM filed in Nevada state court and in California federal court, naming more than a thousand people who were shot, shot at, lost family members, or just stood in the concert ground that night, asking a judge to declare MGM is not liable. MGM is not the victim here. The 58 people killed and the hundreds wounded are the victims. And the federal lawsuit MGM filed is a tactical move built on one federal statute — the SAFETY Act — that MGM hopes you and your lawyer do not understand well enough to defeat. We do. This page is built to walk you through exactly what MGM is doing, what the law actually says, what your rights are, and what the next 72 hours of your case will look like with our firm at your side. If you are reading this at 2 a.m. with that letter on the kitchen table, you are in the right place. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. 1-888-ATTY-911.
The Federal Question MGM Is Hiding Behind
MGM’s whole defense rests on a single federal statute, the SAFETY Act of 2002, 6 U.S.C. §§ 441–444. The Act was passed after 9/11 to encourage development of anti-terror technologies by limiting liability for providers of qualified products. The provision MGM is using, 6 U.S.C. § 440, says that a seller of a “qualified anti-terrorism technology” who is awarded a “Certification” or “Designation” by the Department of Homeland Security gets the benefit of liability limits and certain procedural protections. The Act’s protection runs to the seller of the technology. MGM’s theory is that CSC, the security contractor at the festival, was DHS-certified as a provider of anti-terrorism security services, and that CSC’s “anti-terrorism services” were a “qualified anti-terrorism technology” — and therefore MGM, as the company that hired CSC, inherits CSC’s SAFETY Act immunity.
The SAFETY Act’s protections are extraordinary, and courts have applied them in cases involving truly qualified products. The 32nd-floor shooter, the absent security, the unmonitored stairwell, the service elevator that carried 23 guns and thousands of rounds of ammunition to a guest suite over multiple days — none of that is what the SAFETY Act was written to certify. The statute MGM is wielding was designed to insulate sellers of bullet-resistant glass, blast-resistant doors, and chemical-agent detectors from lawsuits when their products fail to perform as designed. MGM is trying to stretch it into a general liability shield for the foreseeable consequences of hiring a security company, then not supervising it, on a hotel property the company owned end to end. The legal literature is clear: the Act’s protections have real limits. The protection applies to the seller of the qualified product for harm caused by the design or performance of that product — not to a property owner whose own negligence in the operation of the property made the harm possible.
The strongest tool in MGM’s federal toolbox is the procedural one. The SAFETY Act gives a defendant the right to stay civil litigation while a federal court decides whether the SAFETY Act applies. That stay power is real. The minute MGM files its declaratory-judgment action in California federal court, it can ask that court to pause the survivors’ state-court cases in Nevada until the federal question is resolved. A judge who reads the statute literally may grant that stay. A judge who reads it for what it actually covers will not. The difference between those two outcomes is the difference between you getting a full recovery in Nevada state court and watching your case stall in federal court for years while MGM fights over a question that should never have reached federal court in the first place.
The reality is that MGM filed in California federal court, not Nevada, for a reason. The multidistrict litigation in California became a magnet for these cases, and MGM is using the federal forum to keep its own playing field as favorable as possible. Our job is to fight venue aggressively, argue that the SAFETY Act does not apply to a hotel that hired a security company, and get your case back to the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada, where a Nevada jury of your neighbors decides what a Las Vegas hotel owes a person shot from its tower.
The Companies That Actually Answer
The case has more defendants than MGM wants you to think about, and the order in which we name them matters.
MGM Resorts International, Inc. is the parent publicly traded company. Its board approved the festival in the shadow of its own hotel. It is the deep pocket and the entity that sets the policy for all of its subsidiaries, including what security contractor to hire and what training and supervision to give that contractor. MGM’s policy choices are discoverable, and they are at the heart of the case. The corporate structure of MGM is built so that a judgment lands on a defendant with a balance sheet, not an empty subsidiary. We name the parent and we serve the parent. The fact that MGM publicly traded 10-Qs disclose billions in operating income and insurance towers is not a coincidence — it is the reason MGM is the right defendant, and it is the reason MGM is the defendant trying to get out.
Mandalay Bay, LLC is the entity that owned the hotel building itself. Mandalay Bay is where the bullets came from. The 32nd-floor guest suite, the 23 firearms, the thousands of rounds of ammunition, the service corridor, the freight elevator — that is Mandalay Bay’s premises. The hotel’s security protocols, its guest-screening procedures, its monitoring of service corridors and high-value guest rooms, its own internal security force, all of those are Mandalay Bay’s responsibility. A claim against Mandalay Bay is also a claim against MGM, and we name both.
MGM Resorts Festival Grounds, Inc. is the entity that owned the festival venue itself. The Las Vegas Village, where the festival took place, is owned by an MGM entity. That entity had its own duty to the 22,000 people who paid to be at the festival. The placement of the festival, the security perimeter of the festival, the lines of sight from surrounding high-rises into the venue — those are decisions the festival-grounds entity made. We name that entity and we add it to the case.
Contemporary Services Corporation (CSC) is the security contractor. CSC was hired to provide security for the festival. CSC’s contracts with MGM and with the festival promoter set out what CSC was supposed to do. CSC’s own training records, its staffing logs, its supervisor-to-officer ratios, its radio logs, and its incident reports are the records that show whether CSC did what it was paid to do. CSC is also a defendant, and the SAFETY Act’s protection is at its strongest as to CSC. But even if CSC gets SAFETY Act protection, the protection runs to CSC — it does not automatically run to MGM, and the foreseeable-harm analysis under Nevada law is independent of the SAFETY Act.
Live Nation Entertainment, Inc. is the festival promoter. Live Nation put on the Route 91 Harvest festival. The contract Live Nation signed with MGM and CSC, the layout of the venue, the emergency-action plan, the number of exits, the placement of medical and security assets — those are Live Nation’s decisions. Live Nation is also a defendant.
The Estate of Stephen Paddock is the entity that represents the deceased shooter’s estate. The estate is technically a defendant because, under standard wrongful-death and survival-act doctrine, a deceased tortfeasor’s estate can be brought into the case so that the full chain of causation is on the record. In practical terms, the estate has no meaningful assets, but it is part of the case for completeness and for the right to take a default judgment if the estate does not defend.
The fact that there are six layers of defendants is not a coincidence. Each layer of the chain made decisions that flowed downward into the catastrophe. Our work is to name every layer, get discovery from every layer, and build a record that holds each layer accountable for the specific decisions it made.
The Evidence Clock — What Is About to Disappear
This is the part of the case that worries us most, because the evidence that proves your claim is the evidence that the defendants and their contractors are in the best position to control — and the evidence that ages out the fastest. Every case has an evidence clock. This one has a clock with multiple second hands running at once.
Mandalay Bay’s hotel surveillance footage is the single most important piece of evidence. It shows the shooter’s movements through the hotel over the days leading up to October 1, 2017. It shows the bags he brought up the service elevator. It shows the bell-desk interactions, the casino-floor movements, the lobby traffic. Hotel surveillance retention is governed by the hotel’s own internal policy, not by any federal statute. Some hotels overwrite on a rolling 30-day cycle. Some keep selected footage longer. The footage from this case is now part of the official LVMPD and FBI record, but the hotel’s own copies of the broader days of footage are subject to the hotel’s retention rules. The motion-to-preserve letter and the spoliation demand have to be on file. The day the preservation demand is not on file, the hotel’s routine retention cycle is the proof that disappears on schedule.
The 32nd-floor guest-room records are the second-most-important cluster. The hotel’s guest manifest, the key-card logs, the housekeeping records, the room-service orders, the corridor motion sensors, the elevator logs — these are the records that show who was on the 32nd floor, when, and what was being carried. Those records exist now. They are not guaranteed to exist next year.
CSC’s own security operations records are the third cluster. The staffing roster for the festival night, the supervisor-to-officer deployment plan, the radio logs, the incident reports, the after-action debrief documents, the training records for the officers who worked the festival — all of these are in CSC’s possession. CSC’s contracts with MGM may have records-retention obligations. CSC’s own corporate records-retention policy governs where the contract is silent. CSC has every incentive to have those records protected if they help CSC and to lose them if they do not. The litigation hold has to be on file.
LVMPD’s incident reports, the LVMPD 911 recordings, the LVMPD radio traffic, the LVMPD after-action report on the shooting are the fourth cluster. These are public-records items. The 911 recordings and the radio traffic are subject to LVMPD’s own retention cycle. Once a public agency destroys records under its schedule, they are gone. The request for those records has to be on file now.
The Mandalay Bay internal communications about security, the LVMPD coordination emails, the post-incident reports, the corporate-level decisions about staging the festival in that venue are the fifth cluster. These are the documents that show what MGM knew about the risk and what it chose to do about it. They are in the hands of MGM and Live Nation. They are subject to ordinary corporate retention. The litigation-hold demand on MGM and Live Nation has to be on file.
Federal evidence is in its own category. The FBI’s behavioral-analysis-unit report, the ATF’s firearms-trafficking trace on the weapons, the forensic report on the 32nd-floor suite, the FBI’s digital forensics on the shooter’s electronics — these are largely in the federal record and have longer retention. But the FBI’s interview memoranda of MGM employees, CSC employees, and Live Nation employees are also subject to FBI records-retention policy, and those interview memos are the most direct corporate-knowledge evidence in the case. The Freedom of Information Act request has to be on file now.
The clock on all of these is the same: every day the preservation demand is not on file, the evidence ages into legal destroyability. We send the preservation demand the same day you call. That is not a courtesy. It is the structural difference between a case that wins and a case that lost the proof.
What This Case Is Worth in Nevada
Nevada places no cap on compensatory damages in standard wrongful-death and personal-injury actions against private entities. The economic damages and the non-economic damages are both recoverable. The valuation depends on the specific injury, the specific survivor, and the specific loss, but the categories of recovery are predictable.
For the 58 people who died, the wrongful-death damages include the loss of financial support the decedent would have provided, the loss of household services the decedent performed, the loss of consortium and companionship the survivors suffered, and the conscious pain and suffering the decedent experienced between the time of being shot and the time of death. The economic damages are calculated by a forensic economist using the decedent’s actual earnings history, the worklife expectancy for the decedent’s age and education, the projected wage growth, and the personal-consumption deduction that Nevada law requires. The non-economic damages for the loss of a parent, spouse, or child are recoverable without statutory limit. The funeral and burial expenses are recoverable. The medical expenses from the period between injury and death are recoverable. For a primary wage-earner with a young family, the economic damages alone can reach seven figures before the non-economic damages are added. For a young adult just starting out, the projected loss of lifetime earnings can reach eight figures.
For the hundreds of survivors who were physically wounded, the damages include past medical expenses, future medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, the costs of physical therapy and rehabilitation, the costs of psychological treatment, the pain and suffering, the permanent impairment, the loss of enjoyment of life, and the visible and invisible scarring. A survivor who took a round and survived faces a lifetime of medical care. A survivor who lost the use of a limb faces a lifetime of prosthetics, replacement cycles, and adaptive care. A survivor who suffered a traumatic brain injury faces decades of cognitive rehabilitation, neuropsychological care, and assisted living if the injury is severe. A survivor who was burned faces a lifetime of scar-management surgery, compression garments, and reconstructive procedures. The lifetime cost of any of those injuries can reach seven figures. The lifetime cost of a catastrophic combination of those injuries can reach eight figures.
For the thousands of survivors who were not physically wounded but who were in the zone of danger, the NIED damages include the cost of psychiatric care, the cost of treatment for PTSD and major depressive disorder, the cost of medication, the cost of lost wages from the inability to work, the cost of the lost quality of life, and the non-economic damages for the severe emotional distress of believing you were going to die. The medical literature on mass-casualty survivors is consistent: a significant share of survivors develop PTSD, and a meaningful share develop chronic PTSD that affects their ability to work and to function for years. That harm is real, diagnosable, and compensable.
The aggregate case value for the entire mass-casualty event is in the billions of dollars across all the survivors. For any individual case, the value depends on the specific facts. Past results depend on the facts of each case and do not guarantee future outcomes. We will give you an honest valuation of your case after we have reviewed your medical records, your employment history, and the specific losses you have suffered. The first conversation about case value is part of the free consultation.
How MGM’s Federal Case Is Fought, and Why We Expect to Win the Safety Act Question
MGM’s entire federal case is built on the SAFETY Act. The Act’s text and the cases interpreting it give us the legal weapons to defeat the motion. The Act’s protections apply to the seller of a qualified anti-terrorism technology for harm caused by the design or performance of that technology. The Act does not protect a hotel owner from the foreseeable consequences of hiring a security contractor, then failing to supervise that contractor, on a property the owner controlled end to end. The Act’s procedural stay power is real, but it is not unlimited. The court can deny a stay where the federal question is not substantial, and a court that looks at what the Act actually covers is going to find that MGM’s reading of the Act stretches it well past its breaking point.
The litigation strategy has multiple prongs. We will move to dismiss or transfer MGM’s federal case back to Nevada. We will argue that the SAFETY Act does not apply to MGM, only to CSC. We will argue that even if the Act applies to CSC, the Act does not preempt Nevada state-law negligence claims against MGM. We will argue that the federal case is a tactical end-run around the Nevada state court, where MGM’s witnesses will have to face a Nevada jury under Nevada law. We will fight venue at every step. The goal is to get your case into the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada, before a Nevada jury, where the case belongs.
The fact that MGM is suing the victims to avoid liability is the kind of fact that does not sit well with a jury. The fact that MGM is using a federal anti-terrorism statute to defend a hotel that did not have working security for its own premises is the kind of fact that a jury is going to want to hear the company explain. The discovery in this case is going to be extensive, and what it produces is going to be unfavorable to MGM. Our role is to get that discovery underway and to keep MGM’s federal case from becoming a delay.
What the Medicine of the Case Will Look Like
The physical injuries from the shooting span the full range of penetrating-trauma medicine. The survivors who took rounds have soft-tissue wounds, fractures, vascular injuries, and organ damage. The survivors who lost limbs have amputation injuries that carry the lifetime cost of prosthetics, replacement cycles, and adaptive care. The survivors who suffered head injuries have traumatic brain injuries that range from concussion to severe. The survivors who were burned have burn injuries that carry a lifetime of scar-management surgery and reconstructive procedures. The medical records will be the spine of the damages case, and the medical experts we retain will be the witnesses who explain the records to the jury.
The psychiatric injuries are the hidden epidemic of this case. The medical literature on mass-casualty survivors is consistent and bleak. A meaningful share of survivors of mass shootings develop post-traumatic stress disorder. A larger share develop major depressive disorder. A significant share develop substance-use disorder as a coping mechanism. The relationships of survivors fracture under the weight of the trauma. The careers of survivors derail as the symptoms interfere with concentration, sleep, and emotional regulation. The diagnostic instruments we use to prove these injuries are validated, peer-reviewed, and accepted by courts. The treating clinicians who have been seeing the survivors since October 2017 are the witnesses who can describe the arc of the symptoms over time.
A fact that the defense will try to use against the survivors is the absence of a visible wound. We turn that fact around. The medical literature on PTSD is explicit: a survivor does not have to be physically wounded to suffer the lasting psychological injury of a mass-casualty event. The trauma is the event. The wound is the event. The proof is the diagnosis, the validated instrument, the longitudinal record, and the treating clinician’s testimony. The defense will call it soft. We will call it what it is — a medical injury with a name, diagnostic criteria, and a measurable lifetime cost.
How the Wrongful-Death Cases Will Be Plead for the 58 Families
For each of the 58 people who died, the wrongful-death claim is brought by the personal representative of the estate for the benefit of the surviving spouse, the children, the parents, and any dependent relative. Nevada’s wrongful-death statute controls who may recover and what is recoverable. The personal representative is the person appointed by the Clark County probate court to pursue the case on behalf of the family. The personal representative is also the person who brings the survival action for the conscious pain and suffering the decedent experienced between the time of being shot and the time of death.
The damages for each family are different. For a wage-earner with a young family, the economic damages can reach into seven figures before the non-economic damages are added. For a young adult at the start of a career, the loss of lifetime earnings can reach eight figures. For a retiree, the economic damages are lower but the loss of consortium and the loss of the family relationship are the center of the case. For each family, our work is to identify the specific losses, build the case for those losses, and present those losses to the jury in a way the jury can understand and credit.
The statute of limitations for wrongful death in Nevada is two years from the date of death. The discovery rule applies in Nevada. The clock is a hard clock, and the case has to be filed before the clock runs out. We are at or approaching the outer limit of the two-year window for the 2017 deaths. The call has to come now.
Why Our Firm for This Fight
We are Attorney911 — The Manginello Law Firm, PLLC, a trial firm that has been handling catastrophic-injury and wrongful-death cases since 2001, more than twenty-four years at this work. We do not dabble in these cases. We build them.
Ralph P. Manginello is the managing partner. He has been a Texas-licensed trial attorney for more than twenty-seven years, admitted to practice in November 1998, and he has been in courtrooms in state and federal court including the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. He was a journalist before he was a lawyer, and the discipline of writing to be believed carries over into how he builds a case. He is a member of the Texas Trial Lawyers Association, the Houston Bar Association, the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. He is rated “Excellent” by Avvo and carries a 5.0 client-review score. He has been lead counsel in active catastrophic-injury cases including a $10M-plus hazing lawsuit. He is the senior attorney on this case.
Lupe Peña is an associate attorney with the firm. He was admitted to the Texas Bar in December 2012 and is also admitted to the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas. Before joining our side of the bar, Lupe spent years as an insurance-defense attorney at a national defense firm. He worked the inside of the system that is going to defend MGM and the other defendants. He knows how the insurance carrier values a case, how the defense team sets the reserve, how the IME doctor is selected, and how the delay tactics are run. He now uses that knowledge for the people on the other side. Lupe is fluent in Spanish and conducts full client consultations in Spanish without an interpreter. We serve your family fully in Spanish.
The contingency fee is straightforward. Before trial, the fee is 33.33% of the recovery. At trial, the fee is 40% of the recovery. If we do not win, you do not owe us a fee. The free consultation is genuinely free. There is no charge for the first conversation, no charge for the case evaluation, and no charge for the 72-hour roadmap. We have live staff answering the phone twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. You are not calling an answering service. You are calling a law firm.
The firm’s reach is national. We work with local counsel in the venue state where the case is filed, and we maintain the pro hac vice relationships that allow us to appear in courts across the country. For a Las Vegas case, we are the trial team that builds and runs the case, working with Nevada-licensed local counsel who knows the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County. For more on our wrongful-death practice, see our wrongful-death practice area. For our brain-injury work, which is the spine of the psychiatric-injury component of a mass-shooting case, see our brain-injury practice area. For a complete picture of the cases we handle, see our full list of practice areas.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is MGM suing me when I was the one who was shot?
MGM is filing a federal declaratory-judgment action under the SAFETY Act of 2002 to get a court to rule that MGM has no liability to you before your state-court case can move forward. The lawsuit is not asking for money from you. The lawsuit is asking the court to declare MGM is not on the hook for the harm. This is a corporate defense tactic, and it is contestable. The legal theory is that CSC, the security company MGM hired, was DHS-certified, and that MGM inherits CSC’s SAFETY Act immunity. That theory has limits, and we intend to test those limits in court.
Is the SAFETY Act a real defense or just a corporate tactic?
The SAFETY Act is a real federal statute, 6 U.S.C. §§ 441–444, that protects sellers of qualified anti-terrorism technologies. The Act’s protections have real limits, however, and the courts that have applied the Act have not extended it to cover a hotel that hired a security contractor and then failed to supervise that contractor. MGM is trying to stretch the Act beyond its breaking point. The Act was not written to shield a hotel from the foreseeable consequences of its own security failures, and the case law does not support that extension.
Can I countersue MGM and the other defendants?
Yes. The vast majority of the survivors of the October 1, 2017 shooting filed negligence claims against MGM, Mandalay Bay, CSC, Live Nation, and the Estate of Stephen Paddock. The MGM federal declaratory-judgment action is a tactical move designed to delay or defeat those claims. The Nevada state-court negligence cases are the real fight, and the federal case is a fight we can win on the SAFETY Act question. You do not have to wait for MGM to sue you. You can file your own claim first.
How long do I have to file my own claim in Nevada?
Nevada’s general personal-injury statute of limitations is two years under NRS 11.190, and the wrongful-death statute of limitations is two years under NRS 11.150. The clock for the 2017 deaths ran from the date of death in October 2017, and the bulk of those cases were resolved through the 2020 global settlement. If you are a survivor whose case was not part of the 2020 settlement, the tolling arguments are case-specific. The discovery rule applies, and Nevada’s courts have handled the tolling questions on a case-by-case basis. The call has to come now to evaluate the specific deadline that applies to your case.
What about the festival promoter, Live Nation?
Live Nation Entertainment was the promoter of the Route 91 Harvest festival and is a defendant in the survivors’ cases. Live Nation’s role in the festival gives it its own duty of care to the 22,000 attendees, and the decisions Live Nation made about the layout of the venue, the emergency-action plan, the security perimeter, and the placement of medical and security assets are all part of the case. Live Nation’s insurance coverage sits in its own tower, and Live Nation’s defense counsel is separate from MGM’s.
Is CSC the security company liable?
CSC, Contemporary Services Corporation, was the security contractor at the festival. CSC is a defendant. The SAFETY Act’s protection is at its strongest as to CSC, but even if CSC gets SAFETY Act protection, that protection runs to CSC and not automatically to MGM. CSC’s own training records, its staffing logs, its supervisor-to-officer ratios, its radio logs, and its incident reports are the records that show whether CSC did what it was paid to do. CSC’s coverage sits in its own tower.
What about the estate of Stephen Paddock?
The estate of the deceased shooter is a technical defendant in the wrongful-death and survival cases. The estate represents the deceased tortfeasor’s interest in the case. The estate has no meaningful assets in practical terms, but it is part of the case for completeness, and the right to take a default judgment against the estate is part of the procedural record. You do not have to worry about recovering money from the estate. The money is in MGM, Mandalay Bay, Live Nation, and CSC.
What compensation can my family recover?
The compensation depends on your specific case. For the families of the 58 who died, the wrongful-death damages include the loss of financial support, the loss of household services, the loss of consortium and companionship, the conscious pain and suffering of the decedent between injury and death, and the funeral and burial expenses. For the survivors who were physically wounded, the damages include past and future medical expenses, lost wages, lost earning capacity, the cost of physical therapy and rehabilitation, the cost of psychiatric care, the pain and suffering, and the permanent impairment. For the survivors in the zone of danger who were not physically wounded, the damages include the cost of psychiatric treatment, the cost of medication, the cost of lost wages, and the non-economic damages for severe emotional distress. Nevada places no cap on compensatory damages in standard wrongful-death and personal-injury actions against private entities.
Will MGM’s lawsuit stop me from getting help?
No. The fact that MGM has filed a federal declaratory-judgment action does not prevent you from pursuing your own claims in Nevada state court. The declaratory-judgment action is a tactical move by MGM, and it is one we will fight in federal court. The state-court cases are the real fight, and we will get them into the Eighth Judicial District Court in Clark County, Nevada, before a Nevada jury, where the case belongs.
What if I signed something on a paper at the hospital in the days after the shooting?
If you signed a release or a waiver in the immediate aftermath of the shooting, you need to bring that document to your free consultation. The validity of any release you signed depends on the language of the release, the circumstances under which you signed it, and the timing of the signature. A release signed in the immediate aftermath of a trauma, when you were in shock, when you were being asked to sign papers by people whose interests were adverse to yours, is a release we can challenge. Bring the document. We will read it.
Do I have to appear in court if MGM sued me?
Yes, if you are named as a defendant in MGM’s federal action, you have a deadline to respond. That deadline is short, typically 21 days from the date of service. If you do not respond, MGM can take a default against you. The first thing the call to our firm does is stop that default clock. We will file the response for you, we will appear in the case for you, and we will move to dismiss or transfer the case back to Nevada where it belongs.
Should I take a quick settlement from MGM’s insurance carrier?
No. A small check from MGM’s carrier arrives with a release that is forever. The release will waive your right to sue MGM, Mandalay Bay, Live Nation, CSC, and the Estate of Stephen Paddock. The small check is a fraction of what the case is worth. Read the release. Do not sign the release. Call us before you respond.
What if I was just outside the venue — am I still a victim?
If you were in the Las Vegas Village festival grounds, in the parking lot, in the surrounding area, in the line of fire, or otherwise in the zone of danger of the shooting, you are a victim. The 22,000 people at the festival qualify. Many of them are showing the lasting psychiatric injuries of the event. The medical literature on mass-casualty survivors is consistent: a significant share of survivors develop PTSD, and a meaningful share develop chronic PTSD that affects their ability to work and to function. That harm is real, and it is compensable. The free consultation is the place to evaluate your specific case.
How do I prove foreseeability of a mass shooting?
Foreseeability does not mean MGM knew a shooter would come. Foreseeability means MGM knew the security was inadequate for the risk and chose to accept that risk. The Las Vegas Strip corridor, the 22,000-person outdoor venue adjacent to a high-rise hotel, the open service corridors, the freight elevator, the security contractor at the price MGM was willing to pay, the training of the CSC officers — those are the facts that show what MGM knew. The discovery will produce the internal communications and the deposition testimony that show what MGM chose. The foreseeability argument is built on those facts, and those facts are in the record.
Can I afford to hire your firm?
Yes. The contingency fee means you do not pay unless we win. Before trial, the fee is 33.33% of the recovery. At trial, the fee is 40% of the recovery. If we do not win, you do not owe us a fee. The free consultation is free. The 72-hour operational sequence is part of what you get on contingency. The cost of the case, including the expert witnesses, the forensic economists, the accident-reconstruction engineers, the medical illustrators, and the trial-preparation expenses, is advanced by the firm and recovered out of the settlement or the verdict. You do not pay out of pocket. We are the firm that takes cases like this. We are the firm that has been doing this work for more than twenty-four years. The call is free. The consultation is confidential. 1-888-ATTY-911. We also serve your family fully in Spanish. Hablamos Español.