HARTFORD, Conn. _ The Connecticut Supreme Court won't hear a case brought by the parents of two children who died in the 2012 shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School alleging Newtown's failure to train staff and follow pre-arranged safety measures was responsible for the tragedy.
The decision, reached Thursday, brings the parents' yearslong legal fight against the town to a close. After a Superior Court judge threw the lawsuit out, ruling school officials' actions are protected by government immunity in the same way police officers are protected, they pushed the case to the state Appellate Court, which also ruled against them, setting up the request for the Supreme Court to hear the case.
The suit, brought by the parents of first graders Jesse Lewis and Noah Pozner and filed in 2015, said the school's classroom doors could only be locked from the outside in the hallway, making it impossible for teachers to safely lock them from the inside as the Sandy Hook gunman, Adam Lanza, approached their classrooms. It also stated that school officials failed to provide classroom door keys to two teachers who were killed by Lanza, along with 20 students.
Attorney Donald Papcsy, who represented the parents, could not immediately be reached for comment Friday.
In her decision to dismiss the case, in May 2018, New Haven Superior Court Judge Robin Wilson wrote: "Emergencies, by their very nature, are sudden and often rapidly evolving events, and a response can never be 100% scripted and directed.
"In the present case, faculty and staff had to make split-second decisions in the face of an armed gunman and subjecting their decisions to scrutiny, aided by hindsight, would no less serve the public interest than subjecting a police officer's discretionary decisions to second guessing."
The state Appellate Court, in July, agreed unanimously with Wilson, citing the 2014 state Supreme Court opinion in Coley v. Hartford, which alleged Hartford Police were negligent in responding to a domestic violence incident that later turned fatal. The court ruled the city was not liable.
"The facts in the present case are undeniably tragic, and, understandably, the parties are left questioning whether anything more could have been done to prevent the realities that unfolded," the Appellate Court wrote, citing the Supreme Court opinion. "It is, however, precisely because it can always be alleged, in hindsight, that a public official's actions were deficient that we afford limited governmental liability for acts that necessarily entailed the exercise of discretion."
