Gunmaker sued in Sandy Hook massacre wants school records of slain children

Remington, the gunmaker being sued by families of slain children in the 2012 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has issued a subpoena to get the academic, attendance and discipline records of five students, CBS reports. The gunmaker also subpoenaed the employment files of four teachers who were killed.

The subpoena for the five first-graders requested “application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards [and] disciplinary records,” according to court documents. 

“The records cannot possibly excuse Remington’s egregious marketing conduct, or be of any assistance in estimating the catastrophic damages in this case,” the plaintiffs’ attorney Joshua Koskoff said in a statement, as cited by CBS News. “The only relevant part of their attendance records is that they were at their desks on December 14, 2012.”

The gunmaker also requested records of the educators’ earnings, attendance, insurance, resume, job performance evaluations and confidentiality agreements, among several other items in subpoenas dated July 12. 

A motion filed by the plaintiffs on Thursday said “there is no conceivable way” these items could help Remington in its defense. 

“In addition to being extremely personally sensitive to the families of the deceased, this information is legally classified as confidential,” the motion states. “We have never seen subpoenas directed to first-graders’ educational records, let alone children’s ‘attendance records,’ or ‘disciplinary records,’ and we do not understand Remington’s purpose in obtaining these records.”

Adam Lanza killed 26 people — 20 children and six adults — at the school before killing himself. Earlier, he had killed his mother at their home. The massacre ranks among the worst school shootings in the nation’s history.

Remington, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2018 and again last year, manufactured the Bushmaster assault-style AR-15 rifle that was used in the shooting. The families sued the company for wrongful death, accusing it of having recklessly marketed the military-grade weapon to civilians, in a landmark lawsuit. Remington has argued that the Bushmaster is a legal firearm and that the sale of the gun used in the school shooting was legal. Attorneys for the gunmaker did not respond to requests for comment.