The image stopped him cold. Josh Koskoff, a Connecticut lawyer, was scanning crime scene photos of the 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting when he noticed “taped mags” on a classroom floor, two ammunition magazines crudely duct-taped together to speed reloading.
The gunman had dropped them during his rampage that killed 20 first graders and six educators in Newtown, Conn.
That photo was a “checkmate moment,” Mr. Koskoff said, in the novel legal strategy that ultimately resulted in the $73 million settlement last week for the families of nine Sandy Hook victims from insurers for Remington, the maker of the Bushmaster AR-15-style rifle used in the massacre. It was the largest payout so far in a mass-shooting-related case against a gun manufacturer.
The settlement was also the latest in a half-dozen legal victories by the families that have renewed scrutiny of the gun industry and of the rising tide of misinformation that engulfed Sandy Hook. Left devastated nine years ago when the Senate failed to pass even modest gun control legislation after the massacre, the families have now won on two difficult fronts — against a gun manufacturer and against conspiracy theorists, including Alex Jones — through persistence, creative legal strategies and in the case of the conspiracists, the technological expertise of Lenny Pozner, a parent who foresaw the long-term danger of rampant social media falsehoods.
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