Attendee At Batman Shooting Plans To Sue Warner Bros For Making Batman Too Violent
from the um,-really,-now? dept
We live in a litigious society. That's not a secret. So it's no surprise that, in the aftermath of the Aurora, Colorado Batman shootings, lawsuits will be filed. But as always the question is: who do you sue? Well, if the linked TMZ article is accurate, Torrence Brown Jr., who was in the theater, but not directly injured (though a friend of his was killed), has lawyered up, hiring an attorney named Donald Karpel to sue Warner Bros. for making the movie too violent. He's also apparently planning to sue the theater for not properly guarding the emergency exit, which is apparently where Holmes left and re-entered with the weapons. Oh yeah, and the doctors of shooter James Holmes for not properly monitoring him.This certainly seems like a frivolous lawsuit. Going after Warner Bros.? For what? That's likely to get laughed out of court. This seems like a clear case of a "Steve Dallas lawsuit," named for the famous Bloom County comic strip in which lawyer Steve Dallas gets beat up by Sean Penn after trying to take a photograph of the star. He then explains why the proper target of a lawsuit is not Sean Penn, but the "Nikolta Camera" company, because "a major corporation with gobs of liquid cash ... was criminally negligent in not putting stickers on their camera which read, 'warning: physical injury may result from photographing psychopathic Hollywood hotheads."
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Filed Under: batman, donald karpel, james holmes, lawsuits, shooting, steve dallas, torrence brown jr.
Companies: warner bros.
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Poor Guy
That said, only a complete scumbag of a lawyer would refrain from telling him that the lawsuit is a waste of time and money.
What a publicity whore(lawyer).
N.
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Re: Poor Guy
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Evidence
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/standard-troll
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Oh wait.
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YOU BASTARDS!
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I don't believe this causes the enactment of Godwin's law, since I wasn't comparing him to the Nazis.
=P
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Re: Evidence
Sadly, that doesn't stop people from trying. Look at the history of the UK video nasties crap in the 80s - virtually every violent crime had the tabloids try to make tenuous links for spurious reasons.
That is, of course, not the point of this attempt. The lawyer will get paid the guy himself can try to profit, the media will have some idiocy to concentrate on yet again instead of looking at realistic problems that led to the crime. Then we repeat during the next shooting. Sad.
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Well
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/24/background-checks-for-guns-in-colorado-reportedly-jump -41-percent-since-movie/
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Re: Well
Patriot Act being the main example that comes to mind.
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I take it he never saw the "Saw" movie series. No pun intended.
Yet ANOTHER case the moral police will try to use.
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"Something bad happened. Therefore, someone was negligent. Therefore, guess I'd better start suing!"
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Re:
Well, I heard the Century 16 movie theatre �where the massacre occurred� offered all the theater-goers their choice of a full refund on their tickets, or, alternatively, a special vip reshowing of the movie.
That's obviously an admission of guilt right there!
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Umm.. The murderer himself? But because it happened on a cinema then magically everybody else is responsible but the murderer?
For the record: I agree with you AC.
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FTFY
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Pre-release trailers, movie posters, and other wanton and reckless advertising.
It's not like everyone didn't already know the movie was going to be dark and violent!
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I'm not sure anyone outside the US has seen the color of the gunman's hair. Forgive me for going towards my husband's profession, but that guy had bright red hair like The Joker in Dark Knight. During his initial pre trial hearing, he was expressionless, and had a very very similar look to what The Joker. The gunman was so obsessed that he lost his identity and substituted the character of The Joker for his own. He's psychosomatic and has a wee bit of OCD, it's very dangerous.
Now this lawsuit could possibly pertain to the rating. The MPAA put Dark Knight at PG-13. My I can see my husband has clearly pointed the shocking violence in the Interrogation Scene vs other movies he's seen with fake amounts of blood splatter. Dark Knight was as close as you can get to being real injury as you could get. The gunman might have had some sense of revenge in doing this. He may have connected Heath Ledger as real life Joker. Heath Ledger dies from a pain killer overdose (no doubt from doing his own stunts in the interrogation scene in Dark Knight) and the gunman's sick mind wanted revenge.
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> in Dark Knight
Why do people keep saying this? The Joker has GREEN hair.
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And there goes any credibility you or your argument might have had.
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Oh, and it's much easier for theater employees to get their hands on the movies now. They are now digitally stored and played from projectors that have BluRay players hooked up to them.
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Facepalm
(Why doesn't the idiot just sue God?)
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Re: Facepalm
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4D!
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The ratings system is broken and biased, but being run by the MPAA it is of no surprise. PG-13 movies are very profitable.
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> at least rate them appropriately. All
> the modern Batman's as they exist should
> had been R
Umm... the killer was an adult. He could go to R-rated movies. Rating this movie R would have made absolutely no difference here, and that's even assuming the movie had some causal link to his actions in the first place.
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That word doesn't mean what you apparently think it does.
Perhaps you meant psychopathic?
> You see, as my wife pointed out, he got so into
> character that he forgot his own identity
Is your wife on his treatment team or something? Otherwise, there's no way she could possibly know what was going on his head.
> His motivations could very well be based on
> one of the films.
That has nothing to do with whether the fact that the movie had a PG-13 rating instead of an R contributed to this tragedy.
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The ratings system is broken and biased, but being run by the MPAA it is of no surprise. PG-13 movies are very profitable.
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OK, being in a crowd which got shot at is worse than anything in the video, but the reaction seems the same.
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Heath Ledger
I don't think the person complaining about it is biased because of recent incidents.
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Funniest Techdirt Article Ending, ever.
*wipes tears from laughing*
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this is the loser
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He wasn't watching the movie.
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Next...
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I think it's just stupid to sue over how violent a movie is.
They knew what they were getting into when they bought their ticket. This would have not happened had they not been attacked. So the real problem is the attack and the pending civil and criminal lawsuits on James instead of the Hollywood producers, directors and studio that produces these movies.
Warner Brothers didn't make James do what he did, nor did they have anything to do with his mental state. That's all his doing and not getting help before something came to a head.
If it wasn't the Joker, it would be some other character I am sure he would fantasize about and want to become. Essentially, he wanted to be a villain.
There are a lot of people dress up as the Joker at Comic Convention and I have never seen those people go absolutely nuts and shoot up the crowd there.
So, I don't think studios should get into doing payouts because it really doesn't make sense to do it. However, suing the university where James was studying and working should be looked at very closely and possibly sued because they must have known something was up with that odd behavior, surely someone in the psychology department would have noticed it and took concern (too bad it wasn't action).
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Realism
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You can watch it on Google video but I suggest not watching it if you have a weak stomach and for the love of god do not let the kids watch it rofl..
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Suing Warner Brothers and the movie theater
It does not matter that this lawsuit and many such lawsuits have no merit, if the lawyer can extract a nice settlement. A first year law student learns that to prove negligence, you have to show - among other things - that the defendant had a duty to the plaintiff, and that the injury to the plaintiff was reasonably foreseeable. It should be hard to convince any jury that this tragedy was reasonably foreseeable, and that the movie theater or Warner Brothers had a duty to protect moviegoers against such acts of a crazed individual, since such a mass attack in a movie theater was unprecedented, and since we have never held authors of stories responsible for unstable people trying to reenact those stories.
Imagine if this lawsuit did succeed - even the publisher and the author of an accurate historical account of battle, could be held responsible when some lunatic/murderer seeks to reenact the battle at the Alamo.
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Torrence should be held tesponsible
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Torrence should be held responsible
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Fans-of-Bindass-Enthusiasm
Regards:-
Fans-of-Bindass-Enthusiasm
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This is why we need tort reform
Lawsuit awards should be limited to 10 times the plaintiff's annual income which should be based on their tax return.
This guy suing the studio and theater are frivolous. This was the first showing of the movie. He was an impatient person who decided to go to a midnight (approx) showing of the movie. How did the plaintiff or the criminal know that the movie was too violent if they had not seen the movie yet? Ever see the Saw series or Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Violent movies are NOT to blame.
He does have a valid case against Dr. Lynne Fenton and the board that governs whether the lunatic should have been reported to police.
The 2nd amendment grants the right to bear arms to regulated militias, period. People should not have guns. All the loonies who say that there is more crime when people don't have guns is wrong. Guns make it easier to kill.
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