Aurora theater shooting: New lawsuit charges Century 16 owner Cinemark with negligence
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| Yousef Gharbi. |
At times, the theater had hired security personnel to work on Friday and Saturday nights, the suit continues -- but that wasn't the case on July 20. (Security had been on hand earlier on July 19 during a transfer of cash, but had split afterward.) Moreover, the suit notes that the emergency exit door to Auditorium 9, where the attack was centered, lacked an alarm that might have sounded after the assailant, presumed to be James Holmes, blocked it open in order to arm himself and don protective gear. Likewise, no alarm went off after he opened fire, and "no action [was] taken by theater employees to safely evacuate the many people left in Auditorium 9.
As such, the suit says, "the Assailant continued shooting throughout the Auditorium until eventually his weapon jammed and the shooting stopped. He then walked back out of the theater through the same door he used to enter and sat in his car."
Given these events, the suit states that the Defendants "actually knew or should have known" about dangers to patrons -- a duty that was "breached...when it failed to engage in reasonable efforts to inspect the premises and to make the subject premises safe."
The alleged failures are enumerated like so:
a. failed to inspect and/or adequately inspect and ensure that the subject premises was adequately guarded, secure and safe from unauthorized use of the premises as described herein;Continue to read more about the suit, as well as to see a video of the news conference and the complete documents.b. failed to ensure that alarms would sound when the emergency exits on the subject premises were opened and/or activated;
c. failed to take steps to make sure emergency exit doors could not be propped open and used as an egress and ingress into the theater;
d. failed to employ sufficient staff to monitor all ingresses and egresses;
e. failed to establish policies to monitor all ingresses and egresses and/or enforce such policies and to adequately train their staff to appropriately monitor all ingresses and egresses;
f. failed to provide appropriate security on and within the premises as well as generally failed to adequately secure the premises;
g. failed to use reasonable care under the circumstances to discover the foreseeable dangerous conditions of said premises and to correct same or to warn invitees and/or customers of their existence, as well as other potential risks known to Defendants and of which Defendants were on notice of, when attending movie showings at their theater;
h. failed to properly train employees or provide reasonable surveillance procedures including, but not limited to, surveillance devices, monitors, cameras and human surveillance or monitoring of suspicious activity;
i. failed to develop, establish and institute adequate emergency or first-aid response and evacuation plans and procedures for patrons in the theater in the event circumstances called for such procedures; and
j. failed to properly train employees in emergency, crisis and first-aid response and evacuation procedures.
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