Slain teacher's family launches suit aimed at media violence (thanks Steve Masters) is a Denver Post.com article about an action stemming from the Columbine school shooting a couple of years ago that says "Linda Sanders, wife of slain teacher Dave Sanders, and two of his stepdaughters filed a multibillion-dollar, class-action lawsuit Thursday against 25 media companies, most of which manufacture or distribute video games." The article also describes a letter sent to John Carmack by the lawyer for the family of a student injured in the shooting asking he "prohibit the sale and distribution of all video games rated for mature audiences to children under 17 - and to do it by April 30," going on to point out that the statute of limitations on that family's right to sue won't expire until the victim turns 18 this June. Here's a bit more from the article on the lawsuit:

The Sanders' suit, filed hours before a two-year statute of limitations expired, claims that if not for violent games and other media images - in particular, a school massacre scene from the movie "The Basketball Diaries" - the rampage by Harris and Klebold wouldn't have happened.

The suit asks for $5 billion in damages, plus damages of $5,000 to $10 million for individual parties in the class action.

"But money may be the smallest part of the goal," said John DeCamp, the Sanders' Nebraska-based attorney. "This is a class action that says that, ultimately, money ain't gonna do it."

The suit contends that the $20-billion-a-year video game industry will not effectively regulate itself, and that court intervention is necessary to keep violent games out of the hands of minors.

In other notes, Nintendo of America is the only company specifically named as a defendant in the suit, and the lawyer for the family that wrote to John Carmack (which is unrelated to the lawsuit) is Florida attorney Jack Thomson, who helped file the federal lawsuit against dozens of entertainment companies following the 1997 school shooting in Paducah, KY.