Serge Svetnoy is suing Baldwin and Rust's production company for inflicting emotional distress due to alleged negligence from the production and Baldwin. Baldwin has maintained that he had no idea the revolver he was handed on set had been loaded with live rounds and has denied ever pulling the trigger before cinematographer Halyna Hutchins was shot and killed on October 21, 2021. Baldwin and the Rust team had argued that they were not responsible for the on-set shooting, but Judge Maurice Leiter was unmoved by their arguments in his decision.
During the incident, Rust's director, Joel Souza, was injured by the gunfire but survived. Svetnoy heard a loud blast from the gunshot and felt a gust of air as it fired, but he was not injured in the shooting. In a separate case, a judge in New Mexico dismissed a manslaughter case against Baldwin after she determined that prosecutors had allegedly withheld potentially exculpatory evidence.
Judge Leiter threw out Svetnoy's claim that he had been assaulted, writing that he had not shown that a reasonable jury could find for Plaintiff on the intent element of an assault claim. Baldwin and the film production had met their initial burden after they claimed that there was no evidence that Baldwin had intended to harm anyone on set. The judge defended dismissing the assault claim because Svetnoy wasn't worried about being injured before the revolver discharged.
However, Leiter ruled that a reasonable jury could find that Baldwin recklessly disregarded the probability that pointing a gun in the direction of someone, with the finger on the trigger, would cause emotional distress.