Judge throws out Columbine lawsuit
As predicted, nobody wins except the lawyers
It's almost a year now since a group of Columbine families filed a lawsuit against 25 entertainment companies, with their lawyers alleging that the accused were somehow responsible for turning Harris and Klebold into teenage "monster killers", resulting in a rampage that left fifteen people dead. Coming in for particular criticism were Doom and the Leonardo di Caprio movie The Basketball Diaries, which features a dream sequence in which Leo guns down his teacher and several students. But this week a federal judge dismissed the lawsuit, pointing out in a rare demonstration of common sense that several similar cases brought against entertainment companies in the past have collapsed, and that it was the two gunmen who were ultimately responsible for the deaths at Columbine high school in 1999. Of course, the families of the killers don't have any money, while the lawyers behind this suit were hoping to get $5bn in damages from the likes of id Software, Activision, Virgin Interactive, Sega, Nintendo and Time Warner... Unfortunately this may not be the end, as the Associated Press reports that the families' lawyer John DeCamp had vowed to appeal the decision before even seeing the judge's reasons for throwing out his case. Related Feature - Witch hunt of the day