Judge: Weise estate won't be added to cases
The estate of the teenager who killed seven people when he opened fire at Red Lake High School won't be added to existing lawsuits filed by survivors and victims' families, a Hennepin County District Court judge has ruled.
Judge Lloyd B. Zimmerman ruled from the bench Thursday that Jeffrey Weise's estate could not be brought into the cases as a third-party defendant.
About two dozen people - including injured students, teachers and victims' family members - have sued MacNeil Environmental Inc., alleging the consulting firm wasn't qualified to create an emergency plan for the Red Lake School District and that it failed to follow through on developing and implementing crisis plans.
MacNeil has denied those allegations. An attorney for MacNeil did not return a phone message Friday.
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The company sought to add Weise's estate as a third-party defendant, saying Weise was responsible for the slayings. Weise, 16, opened fire at the school on March 21, 2005. He killed seven people there before taking his own life. He also killed two others on the Indian reservation in northwestern Minnesota.
"We are very pleased with the ruling," said Philip Sieff, an attorney for many of the victims' family members. "It would be simply wrong for someone, that we believe had a duty to protect against people such as Jeffrey Weise, to be able to turn around and blame the very type of person they were supposed to protect against."
Zimmerman will outline the reasons for his ruling in a written opinion, his law clerk said. Rich Ruohonen, an attorney for injured student Steven Cobenais and his mother, also applauded the judge's ruling, saying that adding the Weise estate would have only clouded the issue.
MacNeil still has the right to sue the Weise estate in a separate lawsuit, Ruohonen said.
"Hopefully our clients will get more swift justice for what's happened," Ruohonen said. "It's been a long time already, and it just keeps dragging out."
Zimmerman also said in court Thursday that the cases against MacNeil could go to trial as early as January 2009.
