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September 2, 2024 Focus | Law

Growing CT law firm that won settlement for Sandy Hook families gains national reputation in gun-maker liability cases

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, known for winning the largest settlement in history against a gun-maker on behalf of Sandy Hook victims’ families, has grown to its highest attorney headcount following the recent hiring of lawyers Ryan Daugherty (left) and Margaret Donovan.
By Andrew Larson

A midsize Connecticut law firm that has gained a national reputation as a social justice crusader recently hired two new attorneys with experience fighting battles at the highest levels, in fields outside of the law.

Koskoff Koskoff & Bieder, known for winning the largest settlement in history against a gun-maker on behalf of Sandy Hook victims’ families, has grown to its highest attorney headcount ever as it seeks to hold two more gun-makers liable for mass shootings in Uvalde, Texas and Highland Park, Illinois.

Including the two new hires, KKB now has 24 attorneys, up from 19 in January 2021. During the same time, it has increased its total number of staff from 34 to 42.

After every mass shooting in the United States, the Bridgeport-based firm receives calls from families looking for answers — and legal options.

Josh Koskoff

“We have sort of become the firm that families turn to across the country if there’s a mass shooting,” said Josh Koskoff, a partner with KKB, grandson of the firm’s founder, Ted Koskoff, and son of Michael Koskoff — the two Koskoffs after whom the firm is named.

The firm’s lofty ambitions often pit its attorneys against monolithic companies, in cases that seem to have David-vs.-Goliath odds.

“My grandfather was almost blindly devoted to the little guy,” Koskoff said in a recent interview. “The littler, and the more unempowered, the more outside-the-Beltway the plaintiff, the more he loved the challenge of representing them.”

Earlier this year, KKB filed a lawsuit against Georgia gun-maker Daniel Defense on behalf of 31 family members of victims of the 2022 mass shooting at Robb Elementary in Uvalde, Texas. The 18-year-old gunman used an AR-15-style rifle to kill 19 children and two teachers, injuring several others.

The lawsuit argues that the company marketed semiautomatic weapons to the shooter before he turned 18.

“I would say it’s even more incendiary, even more reckless and irresponsible, than the marketing we all saw (in the Sandy Hook case),” Koskoff said. “It’s not surprising that these kids who are in the throes of adolescence, and grievances and challenges, take to these messages to kill.”

KKB also recently sued Smith & Wesson, which produced the M&P 15, an AR-15-style weapon, used to fire 83 shots into a crowd of parade attendees in Highland Park, Illinois on July 4, 2022.

Eduardo Uvaldo, 69, was one of the seven people killed. His wife, Maria, was also shot, along with their 13-year-old grandson. Both survived.

KKB is suing the gun-maker on behalf of the Uvaldo family and a group of other survivors.

Military experience

The military-grade weapons used by the shooters are a subject familiar to Margaret Donovan, one of KKB’s two new attorneys. She brings specialized knowledge of munitions to the firm, based on six years of experience each at the Departments of Defense and Justice.

She joined the Army in 2012 as a member of the Judge Advocate General’s Corps. She was the primary legal adviser and trial counsel for a Special Forces unit, taking a variety of cases to court-martial, from AWOL incidents to violent sexual assaults — with the added stress of being in combat zones.

For her first active-duty assignment, she was deployed to South Korea, at a time when North Korea President Kim Jong Un was threatening nuclear destruction.

She remembers when, less than a year into her service, she looked at the news and learned of the Sandy Hook attack.

“I remember just thinking to myself, ‘What is going on here?’” said Donovan, who is a New York native.

She responded to Liberia for the Ebola outbreak and completed combat deployments in Iraq in 2016, and in Syria, right outside of Raqqa, in 2017.

Donovan advised commanders on the legal ramifications of proposed air strikes, including civilian considerations.

In early October 2017, she was in Iraq, waiting for a plane to fly her home to visit her husband, who works as a professor at Yale. That’s when she heard the news: another mass shooting, this one at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, where a gunman fatally shot 60 people.

“(My military service) was bookended by me sitting in these dangerous places and watching the news and seeing these stories about the United States,” Donovan said. “That was formative for me, because I came back from that second combat deployment, thinking something is wrong here, something is very wrong.”

She decided she wanted to help address the gun problem on U.S. soil.

Donovan retired as an Army captain and, in 2018, joined the Department of Justice as a federal prosecutor focused on gun violence and trafficking in Connecticut.

At KKB, Donovan, 38, is working in the private sector for the first time. Rather than prosecuting criminals, she will represent families of victims, seeking accountability on their behalf, instead of the government’s.

“It wasn’t until these last couple years in the U.S. Attorney’s office that I started really thinking, ‘Is there another way that you can approach this problem? What is anybody else doing about gun control? Who is doing something about it?’” Donovan said. “And that’s sort of how Koskoff fell onto my radar.”

Basketball experience

The firm also recently hired 37-year-old Ryan Daugherty, who has his own unique backstory: he played professional basketball in Germany after graduating from college.

Originally from Marietta, Georgia, he played Division I basketball at several colleges before embarking on his four-year professional career.

He spoke no German, and though he enjoyed playing basketball, it became a job rather than a sport.

Since high school, when he interned for an attorney in Atlanta, he knew he wanted to be a lawyer.

“In 2014, I think I got to the point where I had done everything I felt that I could do in basketball, and I was ready to start my second career,” Daugherty said.

HBJ PHOTO | STEVE LASCHEVER
Ryan Daugherty, 37, used to play professional basketball in Germany, while Margaret Donovan, 38, spent six years each at the Departments of Defense and Justice.

He stayed in the U.S. and earned his law degree at Wake Forest School of Law (while also playing intramural basketball).

Then he started a solo practice, Daugherty Law Group, a civil rights and personal injury firm that operated in New York and Connecticut.

At KKB, he focuses on medical malpractice and civil rights. Daugherty is already working on a medical malpractice case involving a wrongful death, which is headed for trial in Bridgeport. He’s sitting alongside Koskoff as second-chair.

Sandy Hook win

While KKB has sought justice for victims for 80 years, it rose to prominence representing nine families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 elementary school students.

In February 2022, KKB announced it reached a $73 million settlement with insurers for Remington, which manufactured the AR-15 assault rifle used to carry out the massacre.

Not only was it one of the largest settlements in state history, it’s believed to be the first major legal victory against a gun-maker.

A federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCCA), provides firearm manufacturers with vast immunity from liability.

Koskoff, lead counsel in the Sandy Hook case, discovered a narrow exception to that immunity: a company violating laws surrounding the sale or marketing of its product.

Koskoff argued that Remington violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by aggressively marketing to teenagers.

Legal experts credited KKB with “piercing the shield of PLCCA” and paving the way for future litigation against gun companies.

While CUTPA is specific to state law, Koskoff is exploring other creative approaches to hold gun companies liable for mass shootings in other states.

In the Highland Park case, KKB aims to prove that Smith & Wesson violated the Illinois Deceptive Business Practices Act, arguing that negligent and wanton marketing tactics employed by the company were the proximate cause of the shooting.

There is no cookie-cutter approach to litigation against gun manufacturers, Koskoff said.

“There are a lot of things that are similar (to Sandy Hook),” he said. “But in the Uvalde case, the gun company actually broke the law, a very specific law applicable to firearms, by offering to sell an AR-15 to a minor. We didn’t have that evidence in Sandy Hook.”

As the firm takes on more work in gun-related litigation, it’s also increasing its personal injury, civil rights and medical malpractice focus. About 95% of the firm’s work is in Connecticut, Koskoff said.

Despite recent headcount growth, KKB’s footprint remains intentionally constrained. It has two offices, in Bridgeport and New Haven, and there are no plans to add others, he said.

“It’s always been part of the culture of our firm to be collaborative, and we’ve resisted physical separation over the years,” Koskoff said. “My grandfather and my Dad were all about being together as often as we could.”

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