WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. (CN) - Security industry giant G4S is pushing for final dismissal of a lawsuit filed against it by victims of the Pulse nightclub massacre, who claim the shooter's firearms training as a G4S security guard enabled him to carry out the attack.
The lawsuit in Palm Beach County court pits G4S Secure Solutions, one of the largest security companies in the U.S., against dozens of Pulse nightclub shooting victims.
Requesting a hearing to dismiss the lawsuit with prejudice, the company argues it is not liable because Mateen was off duty and more than 100 miles from his workplace when he carried out the massacre at Orlando's Pulse gay nightclub.
Forty-nine people suffered fatal injuries in the June 2016 attack.
Among the plaintiffs are the estates of Gilberto Silva Menendez, Stanley Almodovar, Luis Ocasio Capo, Simon Carrillo Fernandez, Jean Carlos Nieves Rodriguez, Peter Gonzalez-Cruz, Tevin Crosby, Anthony Laueano-Disla, Jean Carlo Mendez Perez, Eric Ivan Ortiz Rivera, Franky DeJesus Velasquez; Javier Jorge Reyes, Kimberly Jean Morris, Xavier Serrano Rosado, Leroy Valentin-Fernandez, and Luis Vielma.
G4S Secure Solutions has called the attack an "independent criminal act" unrelated to Mateen's nine-year-long employment with the company.
"There is no nexus between the plaintiffs and Mateen's employment from which a legal duty would flow from G4S," the company argues, noting that it secured dismissal of a prior version of the lawsuit on those grounds.
The plaintiffs counter that G4S had a duty of care to the public at large since the company made Mateen an expert marksman through extensive firearms training, which was required for his professional gun license. The company retained Mateen as an armed guard for years and provided him with annual firearms training in spite of his alarming behavior, the plaintiffs say.
While working as a G4S guard at a St. Lucie County courthouse, Mateen boasted of supposed family ties to Al-Qaeda, praised terrorist Nidal Hasan, threatened a deputy and professed that he wanted to die as a martyr among other unsettling conduct, the plaintiffs say.
His comments at the courthouse prompted the FBI to interview him in 2013 and 2014 over concerns he was an Islamic extremist, though no legal action was taken.
The lawsuit claims that after county officials concerned about Mateen's statements told G4S to remove him from his courthouse post, the company negligently kept him on its staff and transferred him to a private community security detail, after which point his disturbing conduct persisted, with bigoted tirades and violent rhetoric around his new coworker.
G4S should have halted Mateen's annual firearms training and contacted state authorities to revoke his professional gun license in light of all the red flags, the plaintiffs say.
The gun license, the plaintiffs say, should never have been given to Mateen in the first place. They say his G4S-administered psychological evaluation -- a requirement for his Class G gun license -- falsely stated that a doctor named Carol Nudelman screened him. Nudelman was no longer working for G4S at the time, and Mateen was likely never screened by a mental health professional at the outset of his employment with G4S, the lawsuit argues.