Cinemark has emerged triumphant in a lawsuit over the 2012 shootings at an Aurora, Colorado, theater owned by the company.
Rob McCallum, spokesman for the Colorado Courts, said via Twitter on Thursday that a jury sided with the theater company.
“The jury in the #TheaterShooting civil trial has found in favor of Cinemark,” McCallum wrote.
Cinemark was sued by survivors and victims’ relatives, who contended that the theater where shooter James Holmes killed a dozen people and injured dozens more during a screening of “The Dark Knight Rises” was inadequately equipped.
Specifically, they claimed that the exit door used by Holmes to gain entrance to the theater should have had an alarm.
In response to the suit, Cinemark argued that if those closest to Holmes could not have anticipated that he would open fire in a crowded movie theater, it could not have been expected to do anything different.
The jury in the #TheaterShooting civil trial has found in favor of Cinemark.
— Rob McCallum (@rwmccallum) May 19, 2016
“The people at Cinemark, like people across this country, are horrified, shocked, and deeply saddened by the senseless deaths and injuries caused by Mr. Holmes’ criminal act,” the company’s response to the lawsuit read. “The Theatre’s employees on the night in question, who reacted bravely to the unexpected onslaught, are particularly affected. However, it is legally improper, and grossly unfair, to place on a private business entity operated by private citizens the legal obligation to foresee the patently unforeseeable conduct of the criminally unbalanced, most particularly where the criminal act is random and unprecedented in its business activities.”