A new wrongful-death lawsuit in Nevada says members of the Houston family and the gunman’s law firm helped set the stage for the 2024 shooting deaths of attorney Dennis Prince and his wife, Ashley Prince, during a child-custody deposition in Las Vegas.
The filing, made March 9 in Clark County District Court, seeks to push civil blame beyond Joseph W. Houston II, the 77-year-old lawyer who police say opened fire in Prince’s law office and then killed himself. The case matters now because it asks a court to decide whether the killings were solely the act of one man, as police later concluded, or whether warnings, threats and family conduct before and after the shooting amount to a wider civil conspiracy. The suit was filed by attorney Nancy Bernstein on behalf of Jack “Parker” Prince, the young son of Dennis Prince.
The shootings happened on the morning of April 8, 2024, at Prince Law Group on the fifth floor of the City National Bank Building on West Charleston Boulevard. Police said the deposition was a resumed session in a bitter custody fight involving Ashley Prince and her ex-husband, Dylan Houston. Joseph Houston, Dylan’s father, was representing his son in that case. A final police report later said attorneys began arriving around 9:50 a.m. and that the questioning had barely started when the violence began. According to the report, Joseph Houston asked whether the other side would ever stop trying to take the children away from Dylan. Dennis Prince responded that they were ready to proceed. A little more than a minute after questioning began, police said, Joseph Houston opened fire. Investigators said he fired 11 shots over roughly two minutes. Dennis Prince, 57, and Ashley Prince, 30, died at the scene. Joseph Houston then shot himself. Police said seven people were in the room and four were able to escape and call 911.
The new complaint says the deaths were not unforeseeable. It names Dylan Houston, Katherine Kelley Houston, the Estate of Joseph W. Houston II, Houston Law and unnamed defendants. The filing points to what it describes as a trail of threats and warning signs. Among them is a message Dylan Houston allegedly sent Ashley Prince that said, “I don’t want to see you unless you’re in a casket.” The complaint also points to an email Dylan allegedly sent Dennis Prince four days before the shooting, saying he had “no idea what’s coming.” Plaintiffs argue that message showed advance knowledge of danger and a failure to warn Dennis Prince or authorities. The suit also says Ashley Prince had considered hiring private security for the deposition but canceled that plan after being told Dylan Houston would not attend. It further alleges that Katherine Houston, who was the witness being deposed, left the room after the shooting, did not check on the victims and did not return even after her husband shot himself. The complaint also cites property transfers made by Katherine Houston after the killings as part of the broader civil-conspiracy theory. None of those allegations has been proved in court.
The case grew out of a custody battle that had already become unusually hostile long before the shooting. Court records unsealed in 2024 showed years of disputes over exchanges, alcohol monitoring, accusations of substance abuse, repeated claims of threatening behavior and constant fights over who should care for Ashley Prince and Dylan Houston’s two children. Ashley Prince had been seeking primary physical custody. In one 2022 order, a family court judge directed Dylan Houston to stay at least 100 yards from Ashley Prince’s home, workplace and her parents’ home. The same court fight produced messages that Ashley’s family later read aloud in public, including the casket threat. Other filings said the former couple’s communication had to be routed through a court-monitored app. Unsealed records also showed that Joseph Houston had agreed in late 2023 not to be present during child exchanges after Ashley Prince’s side said his behavior had become alarming. Another filing included an undated letter from Katherine Houston to Dylan saying, “Everyone is worried about you,” and referring to claims that he was abusing alcohol and drugs. Those records did not accuse Joseph Houston of a murder plan, but they helped establish the climate of fear and conflict that now sits at the center of the civil claims.
The families have sharply different public accounts of that climate. At a news conference a week after the shootings, Ashley Prince’s mother, Julie Page, said her daughter lived in “constant fear” while trying to protect her children through the courts. Her husband, Paul Page, said the family had long believed “something bad” would happen, though they expected Dylan Houston, not his father, to be the source of the danger. The Houston family answered with a statement expressing sympathy and insisting they were stunned by what happened. “We, too, are shocked,” the statement said. That split has never really closed. For the Pages and the Princes, the shooting fit a pattern of escalating threats that the system failed to stop. For the Houstons, public statements after the attack framed Joseph Houston’s actions as something they neither expected nor supported. The new lawsuit brings those competing narratives back into court, this time in the form of civil liability rather than custody orders or homicide findings.
The legal posture is now more complicated than it was in the first year after the killings. In February 2025, Ashley Prince’s parents and estates tied to Ashley Prince and her children filed earlier wrongful-death suits that accused Katherine Houston and others of having knowledge of the danger. Those cases were later consolidated, and local reporting has said a civil trial in that matter is currently scheduled for September 2027. The new suit for Parker Prince adds another plaintiff from Dennis Prince’s side and presses a broad set of claims that include wrongful death, civil conspiracy, battery, assault, intentional infliction of emotional distress, false imprisonment and negligence. It seeks general and special damages, punitive damages, attorney’s fees and a jury trial, but does not set a specific dollar figure. The defendants had not yet filed responses in the new case as of Thursday. Jonathan Hansen, an attorney for Katherine Houston, told one Las Vegas outlet there was “no conspiracy.” That denial lines up with the police view, but it does not end the civil case. A jury, not detectives, would decide whether the evidence supports the broader claims.
Police findings remain a major obstacle for the plaintiffs. In September 2025, Las Vegas police released a final investigative report stating they found no evidence that anyone else knew Joseph Houston planned to kill Dennis and Ashley Prince. Detectives said Dylan Houston was not a homicide suspect. The report described a small set of moments that have since become central to public memory: the short exchange just before the first shot, the quick escape of surviving witnesses and a handwritten note found in Joseph Houston’s briefcase accusing Ashley Prince of evil and asking when the effort to take the children from Dylan would stop. Even so, the police report did not settle every public question. It addressed criminal responsibility, not civil duty. The new complaint tries to use the same broader history of threats, family tensions and conduct around the deposition to argue that warning signs were obvious enough that responsibility should not end with the dead gunman. That legal distinction is now likely to define the next phase of the case.
The shooting also left several lives moving forward on parallel tracks. Ashley Prince’s parents said soon after her death that they would continue her custody fight on behalf of the children she shared with Dylan Houston. In January 2026, local reporting said that part of the custody dispute was settled, with the children’s time split between their father and their maternal grandparents. Parker Prince’s new lawsuit reflects a different branch of the family and a different loss: the son of Dennis Prince seeking accountability for the father he lost in the conference room where the deposition began. That detail gives the case a second center of grief beyond the custody battle that first drew public attention. What began as one of the most shocking courtroom-related killings in recent Las Vegas history has now become a long civil struggle over warning signs, duty, fear and whether the legal system can separate hindsight from proof.
As of Thursday, March 12, the new wrongful-death case had been filed but not yet answered in court, and no judge had ruled on the conspiracy allegations. The next milestone is expected to be the defendants’ first responses in Clark County, followed by early motions that will test whether the suit moves toward discovery and, eventually, a jury.