Georgia Premises Liability and Negligent Security in 2023 and Beyond
CVS Pharmacy, LLC v. Carmichael; WELCH et al. v. PAPPAS RESTAURANTS, INC; and WELCH et al. v. TACTICAL SECURITY GROUP, LLC Cases. Negligent Security.
Facts:
After Cynthia Welch was injured and her husband Anthony was killed in a shooting in the parking lot of Pappadeaux Restaurant, she sued Pappas Restaurants, Inc., which owned the property, and Tactical Security Group, LLC, which provided the on-site security guards.
On Friday, October 7, 2016, Welch, and her husband went to dinner at Pappadeaux and parked in the lower lot. Because the restaurants were extremely crowded that night, with customers waiting over an hour to be seated, there were many people in the parking lot area. Although there were three guards on site most of that evening, one guard left at 10:00 p.m. After that, one of Tactical’s guards patrolled the parking lot while the second guard remained stationed in the fire lane. Shortly after 10:00 p.m., as the Welches walked through the parking lot back to their car, a man stepped in front of them, demanded their belongings, and then shot both of them. Anthony was killed. The shooter and his accomplices were later captured and convicted of murder.
The record showed the following:
- Pappas owns Pappadeaux and another restaurant on the same property on Windy Hill Road, with parking lots for each and a lower lot for overflow parking.
- The parking lots are well-lit, and there are surveillance cameras throughout the area.
- To patrol the grounds, Pappas hired Tactical to provide unarmed, uniformed security guards to deter crime such as automobile break-ins and loitering, and to assist with traffic issues.
- On Friday nights, two guards were assigned to patrol the lots, and a third guard was stationed in the fire lane in front of Pappadeaux to monitor traffic. The guards patrolled the lots on foot or in marked security cars with flashing lights.
- Security footage from the surveillance cameras showed the assailants driving into the lot shortly after 10:00 p.m. and lingering around their car before the attack.
- The footage also confirms that, 60 seconds before the shooting, a guard in a marked security vehicle with the lights flashing patrolled the area where the assailants were lingering and where the attack would occur moments later.
- Cynthia Welch sued Pappas and Tactical for premises liability, negligence, and wrongful death.
Court Decision:
The Supreme Court of Georgia determined the following:
A jury or judge would be authorized to find that the harm to plaintiff, being shot at by a robber in the parking lot of defendant’s store, was the kind of harm that was a probable and natural consequence of the failure to have adequate security measures, including the parking lot, from armed robberies, as the evidence showed that female employees were regularly escorted to their vehicles, the store was in a high-crime area, and defendant’s employees considered the parking lot dangerous, which demonstrated defendant’s knowledge of the hazardous conditions in assessing whether the attack on plaintiff was reasonably foreseeable; The appellate court erred by reversing the trial court’s denial of defendant’s motion for summary judgment because the crime was foreseeable, as there was evidence that suspects were armed with respect to incidents at surrounding properties.
Learned Lesson:
If you are injured on the property or parking lot of another, like an apartment, a restaurant, store, or any other business, it does not matter if the business or apartments had security.