12 dead, 58 injured in Colorado at midnight showing of Dark Knight

Exactly how was the theater at fault?

 

Like most newspaper articles about litigation, that one left a lot of questions unanswered. What is the Colorado law that allows prevailing parties to collect their attorneys' fees? That is a big exception to the American Rule. Why were there federal and state cases? Also, the bit about the magistrate judge talking to a plaintiff alone is suspicious.

 

Nowhere is it more evident that journalists think details are a buncha bullshit than when they write about litigation.

 

Disagree that it would have been worth it for them. It opens them up to frivolous suits from moviegoers at their theaters nationwide who think they will settle, even if they the company believes it is right.

Cinemark couldn't have stopped Holmes and it wound up having to spend $700k to defend against charges that it should have. The four plaintiffs who remained after being told by the judge that they were about to lose were simply stupid for not accepting the settlement offered by Cinemark.

 

If you're an editor at the L.A. Times, how many inches are you assigning to your reporter to cover this story and suss out all those details?

It's not about thinking details are "a buncha bullshit," it's about writing within the framework of an ever-shrinking news hole, while trying to cover as much news as possible that is of interest to your readers. Do you think readers of the L.A. Times are going to read 30 inches of copy detailing the differences between the federal and state cases and delving into Article 10, section 7 (totally made up, BTW) of the Colorado civil litigation code as it pertains to prevailing parties' right to collect attorneys fees? Or are they going to read the first 5 inches of the story and move on to the style section while they continue eating their morning scone?

Any writer can tell you about stories they've written that had be cut in half (or worse) because something changed in the news budget that day, or the story simply got bogged down in too much background. It happens every day. Writers have to make concessions to the size of the newspaper. Doesn't mean they don't think the details are important. They just may not be as important as other parts of the story.

 

Do you think Cinemark is going to get much bad PR from this story? I'm not so sure. The plaintiffs were told they were going to lose. Cinemark still made them a settlement offer. These four victims didn't accept it and didn't withdraw. The others were forced to withdraw, rather than getting something out of it, because these four plaintiffs wouldn't accept it.

Seems like Cinemark tried to avoid letting it go to a decision. These four were so bent on making someone, anyone, pay for their losses (which were incredibly difficult, I fully acknowledge), they refused to do what was right for everyone involved.

 

Which is why you write that stuff and post it as related material on the web site, with a link in the mainbar. "Cut for space" is a bullshit excuse anymore. Space online is unlimited.

 

Fair enough, I can buy that in a general sense.

In this particular example, the story is 1,100 words as is and focuses on how the victims ended up owing $700,000 in the state case. In that context, do we need an additional 250 words on why there is a federal case and a state case? Who cares about the federal case, as it pertains to this story?

Do we need transcription of the law that allowed Cinemark to be awarded $700,000 in legal fees? Or does is sufficient to say that Colorado state law allows for prevailing parties to collect legal fees?

The L.A. Times is not writing for an audience of litigators or legal scholars. The general public doesn't need to read the civil legal code allowing for the collection of legal fees. In fact, their eyes would probably glaze over if it were included. "The law allows for it ..." is probably sufficient in 90 percent of stories of this nature.

 

Don't disagree with that at all, pern. And a reader who DOES want all those details is, frankly, probably smart enough to know where to go look to find them. But I also think that Dick's point is well-taken -- that we do sometimes for many reasons gloss over details, and nowhere is that more evident than on the courts beat. Sometimes the details do provide context, and if they bog down a story, they should maybe be packaged into a web-only sidebar or fact box.

More pertinent than space constraints, probably, is the fact that many overworked writers don't have TIME for this kind of detail work among all the other various duties they are assigned, and that truly is a shame.

 

The three things I pointed out (the two cases, paying attorneys' fees, and the magistrate talking privately with a party) are things anybody who watched some L&O would pick up on. The fact that there were two cases was important because the resolution of one was portrayed as ending the other. The headline asks the questions how did the plaintiffs end up owing the attorneys' fees. A simple reference to tort reform or the special reason that in this case plaintiffs were responsible for fees wouldn't be hard. The whole article is set up to ask the question, but it is never answered.

The magistrate talking with a party was so strange I have to think the reporter got something wrong or didn't describe the situation accurately.