In the largest settlement of its kind stemming from a mass shooting, MGM Resorts International Inc. agreed to pay up to $800 million to victims of the 2017 massacre outside its Mandalay Bay Casino & Resort in Las Vegas, the Wall Street Journal reports. More than 4,000 survivors and relatives of those killed in the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history will be eligible for payments through a victims compensation fund. MGM has insurance available for up to $751 million, it said. “We have not seen a mass shooting of this size and we have never seen anything close to the scale of this settlement,” said Georgia State University law Prof. Timothy Lytton, author of a book on gun litigation. Large settlements in mass shootings are rare in part because it can be difficult to hold other parties responsible for the criminal acts of individuals.
Movie theater operator Cinemark Holdings Inc. largely defeated lawsuits over the rampage at an Aurora, Co., theater in 2012 that killed 12 people and injured 70 others. A judge ruled that the shooter was mostly responsible for the carnage. Settlements aren’t unprecedented. The state of Virginia paid $11 million to the families of victims of the 2007 Virginia Tech massacre. Families in Colorado’s 1999 Columbine High School attack won $2.5 million from the parents of the gunmen and two men who provided the teens with guns. In Las Vegas, Stephen Paddock fired into a crowd of 22,000 concert-goers from the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay, killing 58 people and injuring hundreds more before he killed himself. Before the massacre, hotel staff helped Paddock carry some of the 20-plus pieces of luggage that contained semiautomatic rifles and thousands of rounds of ammunition. Lawsuits blamed MGM for security lapses, such as failing to notice that he was stockpiling weapons in his room.