Alec Baldwin and ‘Rust’ Producers Make Legal Move in Fatal Shooting Lawsuit

Alec Baldwin and the producers of Rust have requested a lawsuit filed against them by the film’s script supervisor be dismissed. In court documents obtained by Variety, Baldwin and the other parties listed in the lawsuit responded to Mamie Mitchell’s allegations of assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress and deliberate infliction of harm filed with the court in November after the fatal shooting of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.

“Nothing about Plaintiff’s allegations suggest that any of Defendants, including Mr. Baldwin, intended the Prop Gun to be loaded with live ammunition,” the response filed by Baldwin, Cavalry Media, Inc.; Rust Movie Productions, LLC; El Dorado Pictures, Inc.; Thomasville Pictures, LLC; Anjul Nigam; Matthew DelPiano; Ryan Donnell Smith and Langley Allen Cheney reads.

“Moreover, nothing about Plaintiff’s allegations suggests any of the Defendants knew the Prop Gun contained live ammunition,” the court documents, filed in a Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday, continue. “The absence of such allegations of course makes sense because the Incident is apparently unprecedented in the filmmaking industry.” 

The response also argues that the plaintiff’s causes of action were based on allegations of negligence that resulted in a workplace accident, they should be exclusively dealt with through New Mexico’s Workers’ Compensation Act. Additionally, the defendants argued the lawsuit be dismissed “because she does not allege any facts whatsoever” against the people and entities listed, whom the filing said are not “even mentioned in the factual allegations, much less alleged to have been involved in intentional conduct.”

Mitchell claimed in the original lawsuit that she was was injured in the Oct. 21 shooting that killed Hutchins and injured director Joel Souza. “Days before the shooting there were warning signs that there were dangerous conditions related to guns on the site, a camera operator had reported two gun discharges during a rehearsal in a cabin,” Mitchell’s lawyer Gloria Allred said in a November press conference. “Important industry safety protocols designed to ensure firearms would be safely used were ignored and actions were taken that were against all industry norms.”

Allred continued, “The fact that live ammunition was allowed on a movie set, that guns and ammunition were left unattended on a cart and allowed to be handled by those who had no business handling them, the fact that safety bulletins were not promulgated or ignored makes this a case where injury or death was much more than a possibility, it was a likely result.”