Famed attorney Gloria Allred told Newsmax on Friday night the relatives of slain cinematographer Halyna Hutchins filed a lawsuit against Alec Baldwin so they can find the truth about what happened on the set of the movie "Rust" in October 2021, when a prop gun loaded with live ammunition held by Baldwin fired and struck and killed Hutchins.
The lawsuit, filed Thursday in Los Angeles, seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages as well as legal costs. But Allred told "Prime News" finding out what happened is what's most important.
"They really want to know the truth of what happened and who's responsible," said Allred, who is representing Hutchins' sister, Svetlana Zemko, and parents Olga Solovey and Anatolii Androsovych, all of whom live in Ukraine, in the lawsuit.
"As Svetlana has said, if someone is responsible — and there are a number, by the way, of someones — they need to be accountable," Allred said.
According to a news release from the law firm of Carpenter & Zuckerman, which is co-counsel with Allred's firm, Allred, Goldberg, and Maroko, the lawsuit filed against Baldwin, Rust Movie Productions LLC, and a long list of crew members alleges negligence, battery, intentional infliction of emotional distress, and loss of consortium in connection with the shooting death of Hutchins during rehearsals for the low-budget Western film.
Baldwin and weapons supervisor Hannah Gutierrez-Reed are facing felony criminal charges of involuntary manslaughter in district court in New Mexico, where the film was being made. Prosecutors said a proposed plea agreement signed by assistant director David Halls, who oversaw safety on set, has not yet been approved by a judge. In October, Baldwin settled a wrongful death lawsuit with Hutchins' widower, Matthew Hutchins, for an undisclosed amount.
"Through this lawsuit, we're going to be able to do discovery, which means we're going to be able to take depositions, have people answer questions under oath, find out what exactly happened," Allred said.
Allred said the lawsuit alleges a number of violations of safety protocols, including the armorer, Gutierrez-Reed, being the only person responsible for handing the gun to Baldwin. Halls is said to have handed the gun to Baldwin and told him it was a "cold gun," meaning it did not have live ammunition.
"First of all, the armorer should have done that — not Mr. Halls, not anybody else," Allred said. "But even if the armorer had handed it to him, we allege that Alec Baldwin should have checked the chambers of the gun himself. Anytime anyone has a potentially deadly weapon in their hands and they're about to point it at someone, as he pointed it at Halyna Hutchins, he should have assumed that it's a loaded gun and then checked it to make sure that it was not. That didn't happen."
Baldwin has denied he pulled the trigger on the gun and said it discharged on its own. But an FBI forensic report released in August said the gun could not have fired without the trigger being pulled.
"Whether it was pulled or not, he didn't check it; and he should have done that," Allred said.
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