Gunned Down in Vegas: What Really Happened to Erik Scott?
Big Nasty,
My day job entails, among other things, reviewing wrongful use of force lawsuits and, while in private practice, I was one of the few attorneys in my area who would bring such litigation.
It is quite credible that here the officers panicked and multiple officers issued multiple simultaneous contradictory orders to the deceased, who was shot for obeying one of those – the one to drop his weapon. Which meant he had to lower his hands.
I personally believe, based on my hundreds of hours of experience as litigation counsel in such matters, that this is what happened because of the police statements about the video tapes being useless, and their failure to release the audio tapes. The events are more than six weeks old. This is a red flag indicating that the tapes show the officers screwing up.
In my opinion, this scenario is more likely than not true.
I doubt that the City of Las Vegas will produce the audio and video tapes in a civil wrongful death action by the victim’s family because expert analysis would show those were intentionally destroyed, and so consitute a criminal violation. They’ll just refuse to produce them in defiance of a court order.
This failure to produce the tapes in civil discovery will likely lead to an order for evidentiary sanctions that the tapes show that the officers issued multiple contradictory instructions to the deceased, one of which was to drop his weapon, and then shot him while he was obeying that order.
This evidentiary sanctions order will likely result in a defense summary judgment motion being denied, at which time the action will be settled out of court as I described above:
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/gunned-down-in-vegas-what-really-happened-to-erik-scott/#comment-638464
“The family will settle their claims before trial, with the whole case being sealed and the Cone of Silence coming down on everything. The City of Las Vegas will addtionally pay the family’s attorney fees under 42 USC 1988. Costco and the City will settle, out of court, Costco’s claim for indemnity against the City for a portion of the money paid by Costco to the victim’s family to settle their claims.
And we’ll never know how much the family was paid, how much of that was paid by Costco verus how much by the City of Las Vegas, or whether the LVPD had for sure destroyed the surveillance camera hard drives.”
