Newtown Survivor's Family Seeks to Sue State for $100M
By: ABC News
Updated: December 30, 2012
A Connecticut lawyer has filed a request to sue the state for $100 million on behalf of a 6-year-old girl who survived the Newtown, Conn., school shooting.
"Jill Doe was a student on the premises who heard all of the subject events as they were occurring, including conversations, gunfire, and screaming, and including so much of said events as were being transmitted through an intercom or public address system in the school," attorney Irving Pinsky of New Haven, Conn., wrote in the filing.
The girl and her parents are identified only as Jill, John and Jane Doe in the filing.
On Dec. 14, gunman Adam Lanza, 20, killed 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School before turning the gun on himself. Earlier that morning, he had also killed his mother at home.
Pinsky said the potential lawsuit is not about money, but about principle and preventing future tragedies.
"My main concern here is to stop this from happening again and we've had a lot of mass murders in America," he told ABCNews.com. "We're trying to get school security upgraded in Connecticut and nationally."
"This is America," he added. "There's way too many of these things. We can do better. We can do much better."
Pinsky said his young client has suffered a great deal as a result of what she saw and heard the day of the shooting.
"As a consequence, the claimant-minor child has sustained emotional and psychological trauma and injury, the nature and extent of which are yet to be determined," the filing says.
Pinksy did not want to further discuss the young girl or any details of her experience from the day.
The filing claims accused the state of failing to protect the child from "forseeable harm."
The state has immunity against most lawsuits unless permission is granted to the suing party to move forward.
Connecticut's Office of the Claims Commissioner, where Pinsky asked for permission to file a claim, did not respond to request for comment on Sunday.
Pinsky said the $100 million requested in the filing is intended draw attention to the issue.
"As far as I know, there's no guidelines as to what number to use and if my goal is to stop this from happening again and again, I have to use a number that's significant," he said.
The attorney said the next steps will be to wait for a response from the state and wait for any evidence in the case that comes from the attorney general's office.
