Offering this for some perspective to the community:

Back when I did primarily personal injury law, I was lead counsel for a mass shooting case. We represented a young man who had been rendered partially paralyzed (waist down). There were several deaths.

Ultimately, I recommended we not file suit, and the family agreed. As per my job, I examined a whole bunch of possible parties. The police, for not confiscating the gun used in the shooting during an incident two weeks prior (the shooter had been randomly firing the gun in his backyard). Decided no liability.

The owner of the gun (the shooter's father) for negligently allowing his mentally troubled son access to the firearm. Ultimately, we decided not to pursue that route, either.

Finally, we looked at the seller of the gun. The store cooperated fully with my investigation and provided copies of sale paperwork. If they had not cooperated, like it or not, we would have had to file suit in order to obtain this information and discover if we even had a case (there are only very narrow grounds upon which to sue the seller of a firearm in California, and none of them applied, but given the catastrophic damages suffered by my client I am required to diligently investigate every possible avenue, no matter how slight).

Ultimately, an attorney should only pursue a suit that he has a reasonable basis to believe is meritorious. Sometimes, you don't realize you're fighting a losing battle until the case starts. That should happen well before 220k is spent by the other side.

I'm not saying that a lawsuit should have been filed in this case, I'm just offering my own experience in a case similar to this one. It was one of the most difficult cases of my career to work on, not only because of the stakes, but because there were no answers to provide. Nobody I thought we should file suit against, and perhaps even more troubling to me, no explanation as to why he did it. He'd never even been to that area or that store before, as far as we could tell. No grudges against any of the victims. No answers at all.