Hartford Business Journal

HARTFORDBUSINESS.COM | SEPTEMBER 2, 2024 17 FOCUS | LAW SCAN ME waterburychamber.com/downtown For complete program guidelines, eligibility, and restrictions, scan the QR code . The Downtown Micro Business Grant Program supports startups and small businesses, including food services, retail and professional. $ 25,000 To open or expand your business in Downtown Waterbury Get Up To year into her service, she looked at the news and learned of the Sandy Hook attack. "I remember just thinking to myself, 'What is going on here?'" said Donovan, who is a New York native. She responded to Liberia for the Ebola outbreak and completed combat deployments in Iraq in 2016, and in Syria, right outside of Raqqa, in 2017. Donovan advised commanders on the legal ramifications of proposed air strikes, including civilian considerations. In early October 2017, she was in Iraq, waiting for a plane to fly her home to visit her husband, who works as a professor at Yale. That's when she heard the news: another mass shooting, this one at the Route 91 Harvest music festival on the Las Vegas Strip, where a gunman fatally shot 60 people. "(My military service) was bookended by me sitting in these dangerous places and watching the news and seeing these stories about the United States," Donovan said. "That was formative for me, because I came back from that second combat deployment, thinking something is wrong here, something is very wrong." She decided she wanted to help address the gun problem on U.S. soil. Donovan retired as an Army captain and, in 2018, joined the Department of Justice as a federal prosecutor focused on gun violence and trafficking in Connecticut. At KKB, Donovan, 38, is working in the private sector for the first time. Rather than prosecuting criminals, she will represent families of victims, seeking accountability on their behalf, instead of the government's. "It wasn't until these last couple years in the U.S. Attorney's office that I started really thinking, 'Is there another way that you can approach this problem? What is anybody else doing about gun control? Who is doing something about it?'" Donovan said. "And that's sort of how Koskoff fell onto my radar." Basketball experience The firm also recently hired 37-year-old Ryan Daugherty, who has his own unique backstory: he played professional basketball in Germany after graduating from college. Originally from Marietta, Georgia, he played Division I basketball at several colleges before embarking on his four-year professional career. He spoke no German, and though he enjoyed playing basketball, it became a job rather than a sport. Since high school, when he interned for an attorney in Atlanta, he knew he wanted to be a lawyer. "In 2014, I think I got to the point where I had done everything I felt that I could do in basketball, and I was ready to start my second career," Daugherty said. He stayed in the U.S. and earned his law degree at Wake Forest School of Law (while also playing intramural basketball). Then he started a solo practice, Daugherty Law Group, a civil rights and personal injury firm that oper- ated in New York and Connecticut. At KKB, he focuses on medical malpractice and civil rights. Daugherty is already working on a medical malpractice case involving a wrongful death, which is headed for trial in Bridgeport. He's sitting alongside Koskoff as second-chair. Sandy Hook win While KKB has sought justice for victims for 80 years, it rose to prominence representing nine families of victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook shooting, which killed 26 people, including 20 elementary school students. In February 2022, KKB announced it reached a $73 million settlement with insurers for Remington, which manufactured the AR-15 assault rifle used to carry out the massacre. Not only was it one of the largest settlements in state history, it's believed to be the first major legal victory against a gun-maker. A federal law, the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCCA), provides firearm manufac- turers with vast immunity from liability. Koskoff, lead counsel in the Sandy Hook case, discovered a narrow exception to that immunity: a company violating laws surrounding the sale or marketing of its product. Koskoff argued that Remington violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by aggres- sively marketing to teenagers. Legal experts credited KKB with "piercing the shield of PLCCA" and paving the way for future litigation against gun companies. While CUTPA is specific to state law, Koskoff is exploring other creative approaches to hold gun companies liable for mass shootings in other states. In the Highland Park case, KKB aims to prove that Smith & Wesson violated the Illinois Deceptive Business Prac- tices Act, arguing that negligent and wanton marketing tactics employed by the company were the proximate cause of the shooting. There is no cookie-cutter approach to litigation against gun manufac- turers, Koskoff said. "There are a lot of things that are similar (to Sandy Hook)," he said. "But in the Uvalde case, the gun company actually broke the law, a very specific law applicable to firearms, by offering to sell an AR-15 to a minor. We didn't have that evidence in Sandy Hook." As the firm takes on more work in gun-related litigation, it's also increasing its personal injury, civil rights and medical malpractice focus. About 95% of the firm's work is in Connecticut, Koskoff said. Despite recent headcount growth, KKB's footprint remains intentionally constrained. It has two offices, in Bridgeport and New Haven, and there are no plans to add others, he said. "It's always been part of the culture of our firm to be collaborative, and we've resisted physical separation over the years," Koskoff said. "My grandfa- ther and my Dad were all about being together as often as we could." Ryan Daugherty, 37, used to play professional basketball in Germany, while Margaret Donovan, 38, spent six years each at the Departments of Defense and Justice.

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