The New Mexico Occupational Safety and Health department has issued its maximum fine of $136,793 to the production of Rust following the accidental shooting death of its cinematographer.
OSH called Halyna Hutchins’s death a “willful and serious” violation of its gun safety standards and gave the film production the subsequent citation.
“The Employer, Rust Movie Productions, LLC, demonstrated plain indifference to the hazards associated with firearms by routinely failing to practice their own safety protocols,” a report from the New Mexico Environment Department read.
RUST ARMORER FAULTS ALEC BALDWIN: HE KNEW TO ‘NEVER POINT A FIREARM AT CREW MEMBERS’
Actor Alec Baldwin was holding the gun at the time it fired, striking Hutchins and director Joel Souza, although he claimed he never pulled the trigger. However, he was expected to “refrain from pointing a firearm at anyone,” according to its own safety standards provided by the Industry-Wide Labor-Management Safety Committee.
“There were serious management failures,” New Mexico Environmental Cabinet Secretary James Kenney said in a video statement Tuesday, “and more than sufficient evidence to suggest that if standard industry practices were followed, the fatal shooting of Halyna Hutchins and the serious injury to Joel Souza would not have occurred.”
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Last month, lawyers representing Baldwin filed an arbitration demand in an attempt to remove his legal culpability. This came after Hutchins’s family filed a suit against Baldwin and the film’s producers, and the film’s script supervisor filed one as well, alleging emotional and physical harm from the incident.
