The Broward Sheriff’s Office will have to pay only $1 million to the dozens of plaintiffs who have sued the agency over the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, with the rest left to the agency’s insurance company, a federal appeals court ruled this week.
On the surface, the decision by the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals will have little effect on the still-pending negligence lawsuits filed by victims and survivors, but it will save taxpayers millions by treating the shooting as a single incident rather than a separate event for each bullet fired by the gunman on Feb. 14, 2018. Nikolas Cruz is serving 34 life sentences for murdering 17 people, wounding 17 more and leaving the South Florida community permanently scarred.
The Evanston Insurance Company, which insures the Broward Sheriff’s Office, argued that each gunshot should have qualified as a separate incident. That would cost the sheriff’s office between $500,000 to $1,000,000 per victim.
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