Alec Baldwin will face civil trial over ‘Rust’ shooting
Alec Baldwin is set to appear in court after a Los Angeles judge ruled that a civil lawsuit accusing Baldwin of acting negligently in the Rust shooting can proceed to trial.
As per Variety, superior court judge Maurice Leiter issued a summary judgment on April 17th, which allowed a case filed by Serge Svetnoy to go ahead.
In July 2024, Baldwin’s manslaughter case was dismissed after the judge ruled that prosecutors had withheld evidence. Subsequently, armourer Hannah Gutierrez-Reed served an 18-month sentence for evidence tampering. She was released in May 2025.
However, Baldwin is still facing the consequences of the 2021 shooting, which led to the tragic passing of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins. Despite that, he continues to say that he had no idea the gun was loaded, and that he did not pull the trigger, which also injured the film’s director, Joel Souza.
Svetnoy’s case alleges that he suffered emotional distress due to negligence on the part of Baldwin and the production.
Additionally, Svetnoy claims a bullet almost hit him; he also accuses Baldwin and the film’s production company of violating gun safety protocols.
As such, Leiter’s ruling stated that “a reasonable jury could find that Mr Baldwin recklessly disregarded the probability that pointing a gun in the direction of someone, with the finger on the trigger, would cause emotional distress”.
Notably, the judge therefore allowed Svetnoy’s claims of negligence and intentional infliction of emotional distress, but chose not to go ahead with his claim of assault.
Though the provisional trial date is set for October 12th, Svetnoy’s case might reach a settlement before then.
This wouldn’t be unheard of: Hutchins’s family reached a settlement with the film’s producers, including Baldwin, in 2023, while three crew members also settled with producers and Baldwin in 2025.
The actor has since been diagnosed with PTSD following the incident, and has seen his “mental health decline”.
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