The case was set to go to trial in October, until Remington's bankruptcy triggered the automatic stay of pending claims against the company. Last year, the companies jointly moved to dismiss the case, calling the family's allegations speculative. The family sued Remington and DuPont in 2018 for an unspecified amount, alleging the company knowingly sold a dangerous product. While authorities ruled the death a suicide, the family claimed the gun fired accidentally as a result of the alleged design defect as the boy was trying to unload it. One such case involves the death of 16-year-old Mark Teague of Missoula, Montana, who was killed in 2015 when his Model 700 rifle went off in the family's living room. Not only are all of the pending claims against Remington on hold because of the bankruptcy so, potentially, are dozens of pending claims against its former parent company, DuPont de Nemours, which owned Remington during most of the key design and marketing decisions involving the Model 700, before selling the business in 1993. He has amassed a trove of internal company documents and has assisted other families pursuing claims. Since then, Barber has been a vocal critic of the company. The Barber family and Remington settled a wrongful death claim in 2002. "What they're doing through this bankruptcy is they're asking the court to circumvent our entire process of justice in this country, to let this company off the hook," said Richard Barber, a Montana man whose 9-year old son was killed when a Remington Model 700 went off during a family hunting trip in 2000. They are asking the judge to slow down the process and to give liability claimants like them a seat on the official committee of unsecured creditors, which will help steer the bankruptcy process. 7, the families said the proposed fast-track auction would "prevent Remington from ever answering for its role in the wrongful marketing of the weapon and that marketing's causal role in the devastating loss of life at Sandy Hook Elementary School." Remington's proposed bankruptcy auction - which aims to sell off parts of the company "free and clear" of liabilities - is silent about the lawsuit. Last year, the Supreme Court cleared the way for the suit to proceed. The families sued Remington in 2014 alleging that the company's marketing of the assault-style rifle led to the attack. 8.Īmong those objecting most strenuously to the proposal are the families of nine of the 26 victims of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, which was carried out by a gunman using a Remington-made Bushmaster AR-15 rifle.
Jessup in Decatur, Alabama, has scheduled a hearing for Tuesday on whether to approve the process, which would see Remington's various businesses - which operate under the umbrella Remington Outdoor Co. The federal judge overseeing the bankruptcy case, Clifton R.