Who has legal liability for mass shooting at Kansas City rally? The Chiefs? The city?
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So far, two teens and two adults have been charged in the mass shooting at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory rally, with more criminal charges likely to come.
But there also looms the possibility of civil lawsuits filed by victims and their families. At least 39 people were injured, including around two dozen with gunshot wounds, and Lisa Lopez-Galvan, a Shawnee mother and DJ, was killed.
The Feb. 14 parade was financed by the city of Kansas City, which allocated nearly a million dollars to pay for it, as well as Jackson County ($75,000) and the Jackson County Sports Complex Authority ($50,000). The Chiefs and unnamed private donors also chipped in a total of $1.3 million. A Feb. 11 media release invited fans to the parade and rally on behalf of “the City of Kansas City, Kansas City Sports Commission and the Kansas City Chiefs.”
Could any of those entities be held liable for the injuries and death? The Star asked three local attorneys.
Local taxpayers on the hook?
The city is almost certainly in the clear, said Bill Carr, a trial attorney.
“Missouri has very specific laws that say you can’t sue the state, a municipality, a county or even a school district except under very specific circumstances,” Carr said.
The few exceptions to sovereign immunity, as it is known, do not apply to the rally shooting.
“The Missouri statute allows lawsuits related to negligent driving on the part of employees of government entities in the course of their employment, and dangerous conditions on public property,” Carr said. “And there are a few employment-related situations in which you can sue under the Missouri Human Rights Act.
“But I don’t think there’s any legal doubt that, in this case, the city and county would be protected by sovereign immunity, and the police department would be protected by official immunity.”
Sherae Honeycutt, spokeswoman for the city, did not respond to requests for comment on legal liability.
Marshanna Smith, spokeswoman for Jackson County, said in a statement, “The tragic events that unfolded at the conclusion of the Chiefs’ celebration rally have deeply impacted us all. As a County, we will continue to search for solutions to stop such horrible events but we will not comment as to our legal standing in such matters as we move forward.”
What about the Chiefs?
It is unclear exactly how much the Chiefs contributed to the parade. The public budget has a $1.3 million line item that includes community sponsorships, corporate sponsorships and the Chiefs. But it does not specify the Chiefs’ share, and the Chiefs did not respond to a request for comment for this story.
Attorney Tom Porto has previously represented plaintiffs in lawsuits against the city as well as the Chiefs. He agreed that sovereign immunity would protect public entities in this case, but said the Chiefs’ status as a private entity that contributed money to the parade could make them vulnerable to civil liability.
“The victims could make the argument that, given the amount of guns and violence in this city, when you stack hundreds of thousands of people on top of each other without screening them for weapons or having designated points of entry with metal detectors or bag checks — that something like what happened last week is a foreseeable event,” Porto said.
“And if a judge found that it was a foreseeable event, then that would open up the Chiefs to liability for putting on this parade in a negligent fashion.”
Carr mostly agreed with that analysis but said more information would be required as to how much responsibility the Chiefs had in planning the celebration.
“At Arrowhead, for example, the police have a contract with the Chiefs, but I believe the Chiefs call the shots on where officers are stationed and things like that,” Carr said. “With the parade, that’s less clear. I don’t know that you can assume that just because they donated money, they have responsibility for the planning. That money could have just gone to clean-up costs. We just don’t know yet.”
The Kansas City Sports Commission is a nonprofit, which means sovereign immunity does not apply to it. In theory, the same litigation logic would apply to the commission as the Chiefs. If a judge found the shooting to be a foreseeable event, then that could expose the commission to liability as well.
Elliott Scott, spokesperson for the commission, did not respond to requests for comment.
Gun manufacturers?
As Jason Kander recently noted in a Kansas City Star op-ed, the American firearms industry is, with few exceptions, shielded from civil litigation, thanks to the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), a 2005 federal law.
Dan Ross, a local criminal defense attorney, told The Star Tuesday that he’d been told one of the guns fired at the parade had an automatic switch attached to it, meaning it had been converted from its original design to a more fully automatic weapon. Police have not confirmed that assertion.
“One way to get around that (PLCAA) is if the weapon has a defect, and I think it is worth exploring the argument that if a gun can be converted like that, it constitutes a defect,” Ross said.
On the topic of the shooting being legally foreseeable, Ross said the laws ought to reflect the changes in American society over the past 20 years.
“It used to be difficult to predict an event like this,” Ross said. “But with the proliferation of guns and our lax gun laws, the foreseeability is there these days. In the early 2000s, we hadn’t seen very many mass shootings. Now they seem to happen every week.”
Carr noted that at the Super Bowl that preceded this shooting, Las Vegas officials set up a secure, 300-foot perimeter several blocks outside the stadium that required entrants be wanded for weapons on the way in.
The NFL Draft in Kansas City last April had a similar security setup, with fans required to register via an app ahead of time and then funneled through a security checkpoint outside the National WWI Museum and Memorial.
“I think that’s something the city will have to consider before the World Cup and other future events like this,” Carr said. “I’d like to see more focus on preventing things like this from happening in the future. Because canceling things is not the answer.”
This story was originally published February 23, 2024 at 10:54 AM.
