I like to see how they can separate the pain and suffering they have because Brian killed Gabby from the pain and suffering they allege from the Laundries not talking to anyone.
Hypothetical. Let's say the Laundries had told them on August 28th that Brian confessed to killing Gabby. They would obviously have severe mental anguish from them providing that news. Could Gabby's parents sued them for that?
I'm confused with this lawsuit. What law or contract did the Laundrie's break? JMO.
I'm guessing the legal case to be made is that not knowing G was dead was worse than knowing she was. So the P's would have suffered less had they known she was dead sooner? Hmm. That the L's breach of some unidentified duty caused that additional suffering because the L's knew she was dead (per the P's)? That doesn't make sense to me. The P's would have suffered differently certainly, but less? Or is "different" suffering good enough?
I've not yet seen anyone make explicit the claim the L's had a legal duty to the P's. Not even the Complaint does that. So I don't understand why experts like the one in @Balthazar's link would opine all that's needed for the P's to prevail could be in the L's phones. Even assuming the content of the old texts exist (and I'm not sure that's likely & phone companies don't save text content, I don't believe and the L's could have new phones), and assuming the texts help to establish the P's claims about the L's (not sure that's likely either), how does that sort of info create a duty? I understand discovery may yield things we haven't thought of, but given the facts we do know, what could establish a legal duty between two sets of parents of adult children? Adult children who may or may not have still been engaged but who were definitely in a romantic relationship?
Seems to me what's really needed for a win is a hybrid action that's between negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress. Something that doesn't require a duty to breach like negligence does and doesn't require the defendants' conduct to be legally outrageous like IIED does. But maybe the goal isn't to win. I personally find that quite unlikely. The P's may want information but they also want to win IMO. And they want to collect more than $100K from the L's.
JMO