Alec Baldwin and others were named in a wrongful death lawsuit filed by the family of slain 'Rust' cinematographer Halyna Hutchins.
“Halyna Hutchins deserved to live,” the lawsuit reads, “and the Defendants had the power to prevent her death if they had only held sacrosanct their duty to protect the safety of every individual on a set where firearms were present instead of cutting corners on safety procedures where human lives were at stake, rushing to stay on schedule and ignoring numerous complaints of safety violations.”
In the suit, lawyers for Hutchins’ family claim that Baldwin, the producers, and the production companies backing“breached the most basic rules of firearm use on a film production.” These include always treating a gun as if it’s loaded, never placing a finger on the trigger unless the operator is ready to shoot, always keeping the gun unloaded unless it’s necessary for a scene, and then only letting a qualified weapons master or armorer load the gun.