is the third generation of Bridgeport-based Koskoff lawyers puncturing through powerful interests. His dad did it and so too his grandfather.
Led by a “$73 Million settlement on behalf of families of the Sandy Hook shooting in a case against the gun manufacturer,” the Koskoff legacy endures in ways both tangible and intangible.
The New York Times spotlights Josh Koskoff’s work in this story: “Josh Koskoff’s legal victory against Remington has raised the possibility of a new form of gun control: lawsuits against the companies that make assault rifles.”
From Michael Steinberger, NYT:
It was Koskoff’s first visit to Highland Park and first time he had come to see the Uvaldo family. When the Uvaldos began contemplating legal action against Smith & Wesson, they were directed to Koskoff, a lawyer based in Bridgeport, Conn., because of a landmark case that he won several months before Eduardo’s death: In February 2022, a $73 million settlement was announced in a lawsuit that Koskoff brought against the gun maker Remington on behalf of families of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre. An AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle made by Bushmaster, which at the time was owned by Remington, was used in the 2012 shooting that left 20 first graders and six adults dead. Because Remington was in bankruptcy, its insurers negotiated the agreement.
While it was believed to be a record settlement in a case involving a firearms manufacturer, the real significance of Soto v. Bushmaster was not the payout but that it ever reached the point where the insurance companies felt compelled to make a deal. Federal law provides broad immunity to gun makers from tort litigation, or civil law complaints. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA, enacted by Congress in 2005, was thought to have essentially eliminated any possibility of holding them accountable for crimes committed with their weapons. PLCAA included several exceptions, however, and Koskoff, a medical malpractice and personal-injury lawyer who had no prior experience of gun litigation, used two of them to pursue Remington. Soto was not the first case to test the limits of PLCAA, but it is the only one filed since the law took effect that has arguably succeeded in pinning responsibility for a mass shooting on a gun company (although it bears repeating that it wasn’t Remington but its insurers who settled).
Koskoff’s unexpected victory jolted the gun industry and energized gun-control advocates. Soto “pierced the shield that PLCAA provided,” says Adam Winkler, a U.C.L.A. law professor and Second Amendment expert. Koskoff’s win came against a backdrop of despair about gun violence in America. Mass shootings have become commonplace; there were over 600 in each of the last three years, according to the Gun Violence Archive (mass shootings, by the archive’s definition, involve injury or death for four or more people, excluding the shooter). Despite polls showing strong public support for stricter gun-control measures, most congressional Republicans are unwilling to take steps to limit access to guns. Some broke with their party last year to help pass the first gun-control bill approved by Congress in nearly three decades. But the legislation was modest in scope: For example, it included making background checks slightly more stringent for buyers under 21. Many observers think that the firearms industry, through some of the weapons its sells, AR-15-style rifles in particular, and how it markets them, has contributed significantly to the prevalence of mass shootings. Soto raised the possibility that gun makers could yet be constrained through the time-honored tradition of using litigation to induce more responsible corporate behavior.
Full story here
“Puncturing through powerful interests” is Len Grimaldi’s way of introducing Michael Sternberger’s NYTimes article and saluting the work of several generations of the Koskoff family and firm of lawyers by the outcomes they have directed. I have met none of these folks, though I have seen the movie where Josh’s grandad, Theodore Koskoff, worked to find justice for a man of color in Pre-WWII Fairfield County. Of course I can see the name Koskoff on a Fairfield Avenue building each day as I come to work here.
The gun interests are indeed powerful. And gun interest and support is locally likely because of the manufacture of guns in CT for generations so that we have more than 400 million weapons delivering bullets in the US where we stand with 330 Million people. And when looking at current sales volumes, the military style weapons, not made and sold for target practice or hunting game, but rather designed to provide trained military with deadly tools.
The other driver in the face of changing the status quo, it seems to me, is a generally tolerated “white supremacy” set of values or frame of reference that has persisted since enslaved persons were freed from enslavement in 1863. However they wer not provided with sufficient intent and follow-through over time to change “racial operating systems”. And fear of persons of a different color canbe a powerful reason for the continuing support of US law that permit folks with racial hatred claiming First Amendment “free speech” rights as well as using a libertarian banner of “down with government regulation” to link support to Second Amendment rights.
How does a law firm tackle the “rights teams” organized and funded by 501(c)4 money for decades and then Super Pac funds more recently, done with stealth and secrecy, in a way that would encourage others in the public square to see how few believe in a democratic republic? How can people in the public square, with such strong beliefs around gun violence, and democratic values, support cases in the legal system working for similar goals? How does one shine an accountable light on the actual amount of billionaire funding towards non-announced “libertarian purpose” when purposeful activities to undermine democracy continues, as practice, in multiple states? Time will tell.