As RF mentioned, Steven Paddock, who murdered at least fifty people and wounded over 400 in Las Vegas last night was involved in a legal kerfuffle with the Cosmopolitan Hotel in 2012. It appears that Paddock filed a “premises liability” complaint against Cosmopolitan in 2012, according to Court Records from Clark County, Nevada.

The complaint document itself isn’t available online. While the matter was pending in the courts, the parties submitted the case to binding arbitration to a third party mediator, and the mediator appears to have issued some sort of monetary award to the plaintiff. As a result, both parties agreed to “dismiss” the matter “with prejudice” in 2014.

In this case, with prejudice means that the dismissal is final, and the plaintiff will not be able to file another lawsuit relating to the same facts.

There’s a lot of speculation floating around in news reports and social media about the murderer and his potential motives. It doesn’t appear that this lawsuit has much to do with the attacker’s motives (a “revenge” attack or something of the sort.) However, in a heinous, high profile crime such as this, every aspect of the killer’s background will be examined with a fine toothed comb. The best advice: as always, wait until all the facts are in before ruling anything in or out.

RELATED ARTICLESMORE FROM AUTHOR

22 COMMENTS

    • Well if someone farts hard on the London Tube ISIS will claim them.

      But that said, time will tell if this guy really did have some sympathies for them. But it doesn’t look like it from this angle, at least not yet.

        • Anyone else think Paddock was framed? Unless something telling is uncovered, consider the possibility that there’s more than meets the eye.

        • Shotgun Sam,

          Was Paddock framed? It certainly is possible. A serious professional assassin could have lured Paddock into that hotel room, restrained him, and then killed him right before slipping out (right before the cops breached the room).

          I imagine this is very unlikely. No one likes to think that one evil person can simply go off the reservation and kill so obscenely. Unfortunately, it happens.

        • Paddock’s father was a well-known bank robber and at one point was on the FBI’s 10 most wanted list, he said. The father died a few years ago.

    • ISIS would claim responsibility for North Korea’s missile tests if they thought people in the West would care.

      But seriously, they have yet to claim any responsibility for the lone wolf attack in Edmonton, even though the guy was a Somali immigrant and had a damn ISIS flag in the car he ran over the cop with. But they claim responsibility for this simply because people were killed, and the attack in Edmonton ended (luckily) with no fatalities.

      In all honesty, I’m not American, I’m a Canadian gun nut. The last mass shooting/terrorist attack we had was some far-right wingnut shooting up a mosque last year. But this kind of stuff really doesn’t happen on the scale it does in America up here, even though guns are accessible. Slide fire stocks are illegal, semi-auto mags are capped at 5 rounds for rifles (not that a drill or punch couldn’t change that), and we have universal licensing and background checks for any gun owner.

      I’m not happy with the current restrictive state of Canadian gun laws, but from an outsider looking in, it makes me wonder as to why the discrepancy between our two very similar countries when it comes to mass shootings? What is in the water down there? Why does this stuff keep happening to you, America?

      • We’ve been a violent nation since the founding.

        Lots of people like to point to our gun crime stats – while ignoring all other criminal assault/murder stats.

      • I studied this in college. It’s our culture. The “traditional structures” of society, and by that I mean the social networks, are failing; people don’t go to Church, make friends at work or work with the same people at one business their whole career , don’t have card clubs anymore. Anyway, not to digress too far, but US society is sick and has been for a long time. We’ve become a society of “whatever, anything goes.” We could discuss further, but anyway, more directly and answer your question:
        Instead, people “self-radicalize”. They search for this missing feeling or want to be in a community; or try to find ways to fill it. The more healthy ones engage, and leave it at that. The ones who are “self-radicalized” are easy to tell. You know, the ones who preach on all social media platforms and who respond to every tweet from a Politician’s account, etc.
        They go to websites and watch tv and read books, newspapers and blogs that are all based on sensationalism; they create a sort of cultural feedback loop for themselves that isolates themselves from the community at large and eventually into a small subset of people.
        You can see it in American newsmedia on a daily basis, if you’re inclined to follow. The snark and contempt for Trump and all those that could possibly think differently, let alone have the gall to actually vote for the guy… It’s alarmingly similar to Nazi propaganda, Italian Fascist sensationalism, or even the “Yellow Journalism”, etc. we studied in grade school, and more in depth in my college classes.

        It’s not a far leap to think you’re smarter than others, based on your #hastags you want to virtue-signal. The people get hooked on it. That feeling of community or the sense of rightness they get from engaging from like minded individuals. Then it’s not a far leap to self-radicalize to the point of ignoring or shutting out opposing viewpoints. Then shouting down opponents, so on and so forth. The feedback loop creates a false sense where you have no real meaningful interaction with opposing viewpoints or any real sense of how far to whatever wing of the spectrum they’re on.
        That mixed with plain old weirdo, and you have the combination for bad news.

        However, in free societies, this has been and always will be the problem. Law breakers by definition do not care about the law. The society needs to decide what extent of their “natural rights” they want to “give up” for state protection, as there is always an element who wants to do bad, evil things. Sure the US could outlaw guns as Britain did. But now stabbings are so common every officer wears a stab proof vest and you’re carded to buy flatware.

        Add to the fact the size of the US, and the population, and diversity and relative freedom, it’s really easy for a determined asshole, and let’s not forget that this is an asshole hell bent on killing, to go on a spree.

      • We just have more people, plain and simple. More people means more incidents of violence. Particularly in a heterogeneous society that the U.S. has.

        Apparently, this guy didn’t have a record of criminality or mental illness (as of yet), so all the laws in the world won’t stop a killer with intent.

        • Bingo. As an added factor, population density increases the odds of violence, but that doesn’t apply here. This guy lived in a small town near the Arizona border. The only possible “trigger” appears to be that his girl friend left the country, at least suggesting the failure of their relationship. Well, maybe. Assuming the police release the details, we are more likely to learn something of substance from her than anywhere else. Heck, even his brother was blindsided.

      • Canada and the US Very similar? That’s a pretty good one. Pull the middle one, it has bells on it.

      • Nicky,

        There are two primary explanations for why the United States has more mass attacks than Canada:
        (1) The U.S. population is about 10 times the population of Canada. That alone suggests that the U.S. should have about 10 times more mass attacks.
        (2) The Canadian population is very heterogeneous white northwest European. Anywhere you find a highly heterogeneous white northwest European population, you have extremely low violent crime and mass attacks.

        Of course Canada has an Inuit population: and they don’t go on mass attacks.

        • Well with Canada opening the door to more migrants I don’t see their homogeneity lasting too much longer.

        • Well uncommon_sense i would concur with you, however Canada has an immigrant intake across the globe that is actually greater than the US per capita. We have 1/10th the population of the US, but the US has 7 times the gun violence rate (excluding suicide) that we have up in the north.

          Admittadly, i was raised a radical right gun owner in rural Saskatchewan, Canada. Someone effs with your way of life or threatens you, they’re likely to be scared off at gunpoint, considering RCMP response is around an hour where i am.

          What doesn’t make sense to me is how many Americans shoot other Americans for arbitrary reasons.

          I get our population is smaller, but 1/3rd the fun violence rate for 1/10th the population? Something has gotta be going on.

  2. Just listened to cell phone video on scene, definitely sounded like full-auto rifle fire to me.

    Wow. Just wow.

  3. There is a whole industry in Las Vegas of suing hotels and casinos for supposed falls and other injuries. It is common in most cases to go to arbitration and offer a cash settlement in return for giving up your rights to sue.

    When I worked for a local limousine company they had supervisors of the road 24/7 with the authority to right a check immediately for up to $5,000 whenever a claim of injury (other than an actual accident) was made against the company. Part of the cost of doing business.

  4. There is a whole industry in Las Vegas of suing hotels and casinos for supposed falls and other injuries. It is common in most cases to go to arbitration and offer a cash settlement in return for giving up your rights to sue.

    When I worked for a local limousine company they had supervisors of the road 24/7 with the authority to right a check immediately for up to $5,000 whenever a claim of injury (other than an actual accident) was made against the company. Part of the cost of doing business.

  5. Another potential data point, and it’s strange. According to the killer’s brother:

    “Not an avid gun guy at all…where the hell did he get automatic weapons? He has no military background,” gunman’s brother says.

  6. I don’t know….the left has become so unhinged that they are already badly overplaying their hand and highlighting their fundamental ugliness. Lefties are coming out of the dark cracks they live in to cheer the fact that the gunman targeted a country-music concert and openly hoping that most who died were on the right. This kind of nasty, hateful, obscene reaction isn’t going to help any cause they are associated with or make them seem credible on gun-control. They clearly don’t mind ‘gun violence’ as long as it’s directed at the ‘right’ kind of people.

Comments are closed.