Judge Rejects Request To Reinstate Columbine Lawsuits

DENVER -- A federal judge has denied the request to reinstate lawsuits filed by the families of victims of the Columbine High School shootings.

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Find out what the judge's decision means.

U.S. District Judge Lewis Babcock last fall dismissed the lawsuits that claimed school and law enforcement officials could have prevented the shootings.

Babcock ruled school officials were immune from the lawsuits.

The families had asked Babcock reinstate the lawsuits based on Eric Harris' journal entries published by Denver newspapers.

They said that the entries that describe the shooting in detail prove police could have known about the massacre a year before it happened and could have prevented it by acting on a search warrant, 7NEWS reported.

The other big issue for the family of Daniel Rohrbough was the evidence that they say showed that Denver SWAT Officer Dan O'Shea killed their son, and not the gunmen.

"Basically what the judge said today was that ... even if everything the families claim is true, it still wouldn't matter because it doesn't make any difference, the governement still has immunity," 7NEWS' legal analyst Craig Silverman said.

The families can still appeal their case to the 10th Circuit of Appeals.

Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 13 people and wounded 23 other people before killing themselves on April 20, 1999.

The families of the dead and injured shooting victims filed negligence and wrongful-death lawsuits against the Jefferson County Sheriff's Department and the school district in April. The nine families argued that the sheriff's deputies should have and could have done more to protect the victims.

The only lawsuit that was not dismissed by Judge Lewis Babcock was the one filed by Angela Sanders, daughter of Columbine teacher Dave Sanders.

The lawsuit filed by Angela Sanders argued that police commanders never even tried to save Dave Sanders and prevented others from rescuing him. Dave Sanders was shot twice in the back and eventually bled to death in a science room. Rescuers reached him five hours after the massacre began.

Babcock noted in his decision that authorities knew the gunmen were dead about 3½ hours before they reached Sanders. Babcock said that Sheriff John Stone and his command staff knew Sanders was fighting for his life and knew Sanders' exact location in the school.

In the other suits, Babcock ruled that the sheriff's and school officials were shielded under state governmental immunity laws, which gave them wide leeway in their actions while on the job, legal analyst Andrew Cohen said.

The victims' families have already settled their lawsuits against the gunmen's parents and some of the people who provided guns used in the massacre.