Serge Svetnoy, who was the chief electrician or gaffer, is the first member of the “Rust” film crew to take legal action against the film’s production company, Rust Movie Productions LLC, for the Oct.
Svetnoy’s general-negligence complaint, filed Wednesday morning in Los Angeles Superior Court, names the producers, armorer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed, first assistant director Dave Halls, property master Sarah Zachry and weapons provider Seth Kenney as defendants.
Deputies seized more than 500 rounds of ammunition from the set of “Rust,” a period film set in 1880s Kansas.
Hutchins died and director Joel Souza was injured as Baldwin rehearsed an upcoming scene — a shootout in the weathered wooden church on the edge of the old Western town.
“The scene did not call for Defendant Baldwin to shoot the Colt Revolver, which should not have contained any live ammunition,” the lawsuit said, adding that Baldwin should have known to “double-check” the gun after assistant director Halls.
Matthew Hutchins, husband of the late “Rust” cinematographer, has enlisted the law firm of Panish Shea Boyle Ravipudi, but a spokesperson for the firm declined to comment on any plans to file suit.
“Hannah was hired for two positions on this film, which made it extremely difficult to focus on her job as an armorer,” they added.
Svetnoy also blamed multiple producers for declining “requests for weapons training days” and for not correcting “obvious firearm safety protocol violations,” including two previous on-set incidents involving guns misfiring.
Other producers named as defendants in Svetnoy’s suit include Ryan Donnell Smith, Nathan Klingher, Ryan Winterstern, Anjul Nigam, Matthew Delpiano, Emily Salveson, Chris M.B.
Meg James is a corporate media reporter for the Los Angeles Times, covering the business of television and digital disruption in the entertainment industry.
Before joining The Times in 2019, Wick was the editor in chief of LAist and a senior editor at Longreads.