COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Colorado's second-highest court on Thursday determined a trial judge did not unfairly limit the types of evidence jurors could hear when they rendered a verdict that Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains was not liable for a 2015 mass shooting at its Colorado Springs clinic.
In 2021, a Denver jury decided Planned Parenthood did not know about, nor should it have foreseen, the danger of a shooting rampage at its clinic. Further, any failure by Planned Parenthood to take precautions did not cause the injuries of plaintiffs who were either wounded or lost family members in the shooting.
The plaintiffs then appealed, arguing Chief Judge Christopher J. Baumann wrongly prevented them from introducing evidence of widespread threats against abortion clinics in the lead-up to the shooting and evidence that Planned Parenthood actually installed additional security features afterward. Such details, they argued, would have shown a mass murder was foreseeable to the organization.
Not so, concluded a three-judge panel of the Court of Appeals.
"(E)ven if plaintiffs had been able to present sufficient evidence of foreseeability to lead the jury to answer 'yes'," wrote Judge JoAnn L. Vogt in the July 27 opinion, "that evidence would not have affected the jury’s conclusion that PPRM’s conduct was not the cause of plaintiffs’ injuries."
> Read the full story on Colorado Politics
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