Jeff Korek on CNBC: Who’s culpable in the ‘Rust’ shooting?

CNBC’s Shep Smith talks to trial lawyer Jeff Korek about who may face charges, either criminal or civil, in the shooting on the set of ‘Rust.’
MON, OCT 25 20217:17 PM EDT

Video Transcript

Shepard Smith:
Jeff Korek now, Trial lawyer specializing in personal injury cases.

Jeff, thanks. You’ve represented parties involved in accident on film sets before. How do you see this playing out for Alec Baldwin any others involved?

Jeff Korek:
Well, Shep, first I want to thank you for having me on this evening, but I also want to offer my condolences to the family of Halyna Hutchins, her husband, and 9 year old son. It’s a tragedy and even more so because it didn’t have to happen.

To answer your question, the civil lawsuit as I see it shaping up is going to be directed at essentially five or six persons or entities.

The first, and again with all empathy toward Joel Souza, the director, he may be very well named as kind of the captain of the ship or the director.

Hannah Gutierrez Reed for certain, this 24 year old relatively new to the movie scene in terms of being armorer.

David halls which you’ve already spoken about for certain, as the assistant director with which others have had problems.

Alec Baldwin in both his role as the actor and Alec Baldwin from reports that that he was perhaps a co-producer of the film, and then of course ‘Rust Movie Productions LLC’, which will have a responsibility again in kind of their overall capacity of running this film.

Shepard Smith:
Hey, is Baldwin in more jeopardy because he’s a producer in addition to acting in it or no?

Jeff Korek
I think it Baldwin’s role, and look let’s not mix up criminal and civil. So on the criminal aspect, you know, the worst thing a prosecutor can do is try to make a criminal case out of a civil case. In terms of his role as a producer, certainly those are executive decisions made about who to hire, whether David Halls was a negligent hire walking around and should not have been hired for this film based on his previous conduct… All you needed was some due diligence in that regard and would have some answers.

Shepard Smith:
Jeff Korek, thank you.