WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CN) - More than 40 plaintiffs have dropped their claims against security company G4S in a lawsuit alleging that terrorist Omar Mateen used his firearms training as a G4S guard to maximize the carnage in his jihadist attack at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando two years ago.
The lawsuit against G4S Secure Solutions in Palm Beach County Circuit Court, from which many plaintiffs withdrew last week, had faced significant legal hurdles in its early stages, with the judge noting that the shooter was off-duty and far away from his G4S workplace when he perpetrated the attack.
Mateen, a U.S.-born Florida resident, drove from his family home in Fort Pierce to Orlando, more than 100 miles away, to carry out the June 2016 massacre at Pulse, a popular destination for gay clubgoers. Forty-nine victims perished in the attack.
The 29-year-old Mateen was killed by police after an hours-long standoff during which he pledged allegiance to the Islamic State and demanded an end to U.S. airstrikes in the Middle East.
According to the plaintiffs’ attorneys, the decision to drop the claims against G4S in the trial court was prompted by presiding Judge Donald Hafele’s apparent skepticism that the company owed a legal duty of care to the plaintiffs under state negligence law.
In a recent filing, the defense team said the plaintiffs' decision to step away from the trial-court case signaled a potential strategy to get expedited appellate court review of Judge Hafele's stance. The judge dismissed a prior version of the lawsuit in January, writing that “there are no allegations” that G4S “had any direction or control over Mateen at the time of this tragic event.”
The plaintiffs had tried to focus the court's attention on conduct that Mateen exhibited while working as a security guard for G4S at the St. Lucie County courthouse. Among other red flags, Mateen is alleged to have threatened a sheriff's deputy, praised Islamic terrorists and boasted about wanting to die as a martyr.
Mateen's behavior prompted the FBI to interview him in 2013 – the first of two interviews – and caused county officials to demand that Mateen be removed from the courthouse security job. G4S transferred him to a private community security post, where a co-worker allegedly witnessed him spouting violent rhetoric and going on bigoted tirades about Jews and homosexuals.
Despite all this unsettling behavior, Mateen remained employed with G4S and continued to receive annual firearms training, the plaintiffs alleged. By the time 2016 came around, they said, the training had turned him into an "expert marksman," which helped him perpetrate what was at the time the deadliest single-shooter massacre in modern U.S. history.
Nicolette Ward at Romanucci & Blandin -- a firm that represented several of the plaintiffs -- said that while she and her clients knew going into the litigation that they bore a heavy burden to prove liability, she had hoped the court would move the case towards trial based on G4S's repeated failure to halt Mateen's firearms training and have his firearms license revoked.