Premises liability and criminal activity.

August 4, 2009 by Zale.

Tennessee recognizes a duty for business owners, in high crime areas, to take reasonable measures to protect their customers. It make sense right? If a business owner knows there is a lot of crime in their area and continues to invite customers to their business premises, then they should take the appropriate measures to protect those customers (and employees) from the criminal element that abounds in their area. This duty comes from the 1996 Tennessee Supreme Court decision McClung v. Delta Square 937 SW2d 894.

Recently, there was a case where a security company tried to escape liability by alleging that, even though they were hired to supply security for a business, they had no duty to Ms. Maggie Barron, an employee of one of the businesses.

Ms. Barron was abducted by two juveniles from her employer’s parking lot.  This was the parking lot the security company was paid to secure. The delinquents abducted her, threatened to kill her and assaulted her while driving her car around. Their activities ended when they eventually wrecked Ms. Barron’s vehicle. Fortunately, Ms. Barron lived to tell her story.

Ms. Barron sued several folks, including the security company. The security company filed a motion to allow them to be dismissed from the case. This had to have been an interesting argument for the security company’s attorney to make. Let’s see, “Your Honor, this was clearly not a high crime area, after all, they didn’t kill her.” Or maybe, “Your Honor, my client is a security company and therefore, clearly had no duty to protect anyone.”

For some reason, the trial court judge bought their argument and let them out of the case.  Ms. Barron, rightly so, was having none of that and she appealed the trial court’s decision. She won, as she should have, based on the McClung case.

What’s this tell us? If your business is in a high crime area, take the appropriate measures to make sure your customers and employees will have a chance to frequent your business again.

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