19 Comments

Wow! Surprised to read about this here. I’ve been following this blog a couple weeks… this shooting happened just about 1.5 miles from my apartment. A lot of my friends went to King.

As a non-lawyer, would someone more qualified please comment on the supposed doctrine which supports a suit such as this? “Duty to protect?”

“As a non-lawyer, would someone more qualified please comment on the supposed doctrine which supports a suit such as this? “Duty to protect?””

Police only pick up bodies and issue traffic tickets. Protection is not in their job description.

Todd,

The law varies slightly from state to state on this, but to put it simply, if McDonald’s knew or should have known about frequent violent crime in the area, it had a duty to provide security adequate to protect its customers.

If, however, this was a random incident and there is no significant history of violent crime in the area, McDonald’s shouldn’t be left holding the bag.

I don’t agree with this from a policy perspective – I feel that McDonald’s shouldn’t be responsible for the intentional bad acts of an unrelated party. It is, however, well-established law.

Ok, without going into all the other ridiculous aspects of this claim (and thre are a lot), I have one simple question:

McD’s should have prevented the shooting…

“HOW?”

What legal course of action (other than simply closing their business) could they have chosen that would have prevented this?

OK, so the McDonalds knows it’s in an unsafe area in which there are gang fights, etc. So it foresees that someone might get shot because of this.

What does it DO differently to avoid liability?

It’s a duty to protect from reasonably foreseeable danger. In the case of premises liability, a court may find such a duty if:
1) the owner has been put on notice by similar incidents in the same lot.
2)the owner has been put on notice by the frequency of similar incidents in the immediate general vicinity.
3) If it is customary for the owner to provide security measure against the particular type of harm (i.e., salt/sand on ice/ lgithing at night may be a better example, since that could be to dissuade criminal activity)

Peter Pan recently lost a suit in Springfield, Ma for a similar event…the court found that a murder and rape at knife point could have been adequately averted if an armed guard had been on duty. This was in the middle of a dangerous city during the grave yard shift, which is somewhat different from the McD’s case.

Maybe a cashier should have thrown a cup of coffee on the shooter.

What does it DO differently to avoid liability?

hire security guards, have lights, cameras, prosecute others who cause trouble, the normal things one would expect from a business that advertises itself as a safe, clean, family style restaurant.

if such reasonable measures would not have prevented the particular incident, then it has no liability

There was a time when this type of case would not be pursued even if McDonalds was somehow considered at least partially negligent.

The criminal acts of a third party was considered to be a superceding cause of the injuries sustained and thus would relieve McDonalds of any liabilty.

Generally, the law today is some type of comparaitve allocation of fault among all potentially liable parties which allows plaintiffs to pursue deep pocket defandants as opposed to the judgement proof gunman.

A reliable jury should see through all this and find the gunman 100% responsible, but as we saw with the 1993 World Trade Center bombing case, a jury allocated more fault to the Port Authority than the actual terrorists.

There is no security adequate enough to prevent shootings like this. The man got out of a van and shot people. Maybe security could have chased him down/shot him after he opened fire, but the whole point of guns is that you can shoot people before third parties can react. I mean, this was in the parking lot, which is a large area with parts often obscured by cars. It’s not like he did it in the dinin area.

JB: Probably hire armed security guards to patrol the premises. At least, I suspect that would be the argument.

Moe Levine thinks “security guards” are a required part of a “safe, clean, family-style restaurant”?

Yikes! I’d hate to go on his restaurant crawler.

Of course, the attempt to make the criminal acts of third parties a mere matter of “premises liability” for which the property owner is liable is ABSURD. As Western society continues its slide into Third-World style barbarism, its bottom feeders will take advantage of situations like this (ever-increasing) in order to profit. They craftily cast blame on “big business” (and more often, little business) as the real criminal, while the gangster in the do-rag is nothing more than an innocent part of the pretty scenery. If the duty of care extends to the social pathologies of New America, there would be a corresponding right to DEAL with such pathologies, would there not? Say, keeping troublemakers away from the property. But the same lawyer class vulturing in after McDonald’s would swoop in yet faster to sue the store for “insensitive” attempts to keep the premises safe and orderly. The ACLU would cry discrimination against youth, class, race, you name it. And once again, responsible actors are faced with forked roads where every branch – including backing up down the road – leads to legal trouble. A legal system shot through with that is no system at all.

The plaintiffs will search through McDonald’s records for all discussions of possible security measures. McDonald’s will have considered options A, B, C, D, and E for safety, and chose one of them (call it A); the plaintiffs will then find a for-hire expert who will say that option B, while more expensive, would have prevented this crime, and that McDonald’s put “profits ahead of safety,” in choosing the cheaper option instead and demand the jury find McDonald’s responsible; jurors hand-picked to never have had to deal with actual decision-making will exercise 20/20 hindsight to hold the company liable. Recognizing this likelihood and the expense of defending, most insurers will settle when faced with this extortion.

We have lots and lots of deep-pockets cases like this at Overlawyered, and this isn’t even the most egregious one. There was another Florida case where an apartment resident who successfully blamed her apartment complex for a carjacking, even though she renewed her lease, and presumably chose for herself that she would rather have cheaper rent and less security.

Is there any doubt that if McDonalds tried to remove troublemakers from its property, they would now be looking at a profiling/racism suit?

I take comfort in the fact that juries aren’t required to follow crappy (pardon me) “established law” which actually constitutes lawless assignment of liability.

McDonalds will probably sue the city, holding them responsible for the policies which have led to high crime in the area, and King High, which should have inculcated non-violence in its students.

Aw.

Two more targets, the Van manufacture! The gas station they bought fuel from.

Were they smoking while shooting or being shot? There is another target.

Oh and yes the city and the cops, especially if the cops have the “to protect and to serve” printed on their cars!

How about the sing manufacture since it may have been providing a lighted target as well.

How about somebody suing the attorney that brought such a stupid case into an over crowded court room in the first place! ??

This is just another example that legally a person is not accountable for their actions. Or, at least someone else should pay, including fees, and a high percentage of the settlement. Oh, I forgot, lets just call it “Joint but Severable”. You are partially responsible because you happen to be there and might have money.

“hire security guards, have lights, cameras, prosecute others who cause trouble, the normal things one would expect from a business that advertises itself as a safe, clean, family style restaurant.”

The shooter fired from outside the property. Parking lot lights just gave him light to shoot by (if it was night time). Security guards are not often effective in situations like this, but they are always expensive; do you want to pay $10 for a Big Mac? (I’ve never seen a security guard at a restaurant, no matter how priced, unless they served drinks and expected trouble with drunk customers. Bars have bouncers, but never have someone out in the parking lot and armed for a gun battle.) Cameras aren’t much of a deterrent for crimes like this, even when they are focused on the right spot – but would it even be legal for McD’s to place cameras looking at other businesses?