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Following right now, an important court hearing underway in a civil lawsuit filed in the family of gabby petito against the parents of brian laundrie, that comes nearly two years after petito s killing and laundrie s disappearance and his subsequent death. one of the key rulings we are expecting centers on whether a letter laundrie s mother wrote to her son entitled burn after reading can be handed over to the petitos. tell us the importance of this letter and what you re learning so far about the petito family s demands here. the hearing is underway right now. what they re initially arguing, and this is the laundrie s family, they re arguing to dismiss the entire complaint. now, they ve tried this before unsuccessfully. they re trying it again today. they have not gotten to the portion yet, though, with what you re talking about, jim, the family, the laundrie family is asking for what is called legally a protective order, because they hold a letter, a ....
No one has seen the letter. the petitos want to see the letter and here s what they say in the court filing. it says the letter in question written by roberta laundrie references bringing a shove toll help bury a body and baking a cake with a shiv in it should brian laundrie go to prison. all of this back and forth and where they re headed into this that is the heat of this, how critical is this letter when you look at this lawsuit? kate, good morning. very critical. we know the trial is now postponed until next year. it was originally going to start this year, but there s a lot to do. before you have a trial there need to be a lot of things that are in doubt like the parameters of the case, what does the discovery look like, meaning information that the attorneys have to evaluate to prove their respective cases, right? so today s hearings are twofold. one, you mentioned that it s about this letter. this letter is a subject of ....
Think it s critical to know what role brian laundrie played in that death and what role the parents, if any, played in that death. again, civil, not criminal. what s the bar here for what the petitos need to prove? ultimately, kate, when the matter goes forward and the open question is whether this letter is a part of that. right. the question becomes not beyond a reasonable doubt, but what we call a preponderance of the evidence. is it more likely than not that you knew, right? you knew that our daughter was dead yet you put out this statement, you inflamed our emotions and gave us false hope and that is terrible that you did that is what they are asserting and as a result you engaged in intentional inflexion of emotional distress and by preponderance of the evidence and the second issue is whether the attorney can himself, right? the one who represented brian laundrie, whether he himself the ....
Roberta laundrie has alleged in legal documents, this letter is not dated. i wrote this a long time before he and gabby went on that trip and it was to repair our relationship we were not on good terms, and we had read books together and i wanted to bring us together again from some of the quotes from some of those books and that s what it was referring to. and burn after reading, gabby had bought a book, burn after writing, and we always laughed about that. the petitos believe it is very relevant, because they are saying, you knew what had happened to gabby, you would not answer our calls, you blocked us on facebook, you blocked our texts, you wouldn t respond to us and that emotionally destroyed us, so this is outrageous behavior under the law. those phrases about burying the body and get you a shovel. ....
Says burn after reading. now, so it went back and forth. the judge says i believe it is relevant and this case is proceeding to trial, all right? in florida. so the plaintiffs, the petitos will have a request to get that letter, but there will still be a battle. i want to tell you about this case. is intentional inflings of emotional distress ways. that time period when gabby was missing and the petitos were calling over and over and over again the laundries, texting them, do you know anything? they did not respond and they blocked them on facebook and they say that during that time that was intentional infliction of emotional distress. under florida law, it has to be outrageous behavior, beyond the norms of sissi. the laundries are saying we had no right we had no duty to you to have to respond to you. that is our right to stay silent at that moment in time. this case, if proceeding to ....