Title: Piazza v. Kellim

State: oregon

Issuer: Oregon Supreme Court

Document:

58	
July 21, 2016	
No. 50
IN THE SUPREME COURT OF THE 
STATE OF OREGON
Patricia PIAZZA, 
acting on behalf of Farley Piazza and Associates 
and as Personal Representative of the 
Estate of Martha Paz De Noboa Delgado, deceased,
Respondent on Review,
v.
Bryan KELLIM, 
dba 99 Pawn & Guns,
Defendant,
and
FIVE STARS, INC., 
dba The Zone;
Concept Real Estate, LLC; and 
Concept Entertainment Group, Ltd.,
Defendants-Respondents,
and
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL
and Rotary International District 5100,
Defendants-Respondents,
Petitioner on Review.
S063442 (Control)
Patricia PIAZZA, 
acting on behalf of Farley Piazza and Associates 
and as Personal Representative of the 
Estate of Martha Paz De Noboa Delgado, deceased,
Respondent on Review,
v.
Bryan KELLIM, 
dba 99 Pawn & Guns,
Defendant,
and
FIVE STARS, INC., 
dba The Zone;
Concept Real Estate, LLC;
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
59
and Concept Entertainment Group, Ltd.,
Defendants-Respondents,
Petitioners on Review,
and
ROTARY INTERNATIONAL
and Rotary International District 5100,
Defendants-Respondents.
S063451
(CC 1201-00270; CA A153286; 
SC S063442 (Control), SC S063451)
En Banc
On review from the Court of Appeals.*
Argued and submitted March 7, 2016, at Lewis & Clark 
Law School, Portland, Oregon.
Jonathan Henderson, Davis Rothwell Earle & Xóchihua, 
P.C., Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for 
petitioners on review Rotary International and Rotary 
International District 5100. With him on the brief were 
William Davis and Christopher M. Parker.
James L. Hiller, Hitt Hiller Monfils Williams LLP, 
Portland, argued the cause and filed the brief for petition-
ers on review Five Stars, Inc., dba The Zone; Concept Real 
Estate, LLC, and Concept Entertainment Group, Ltd.
J. Randolph Pickett, Pickett Dummigan LLP, Portland, 
argued the cause and filed the brief for respondent on review. 
With him on the brief were R. Brendan Dummigan, Kristen 
West McCall, Kimberly O. Weingart, Ron K. Cheng, and 
Benjamin B. Grandy, Law Office of Benjamin B. Grandy, 
P.C., Beaverton.
Kathryn H. Clarke, Portland, filed the brief for amicus 
curiae Oregon Trial Lawyers Association.
______________
	
*  Appeal from Multnomah County Circuit Court, Edward J. Jones, Judge. 
271 Or App 490, 354 P3d 698 (2015).
60	
Piazza v. Kellim
BREWER, J.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. The 
judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case is 
remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
Balmer, C. J., dissented and filed an opinion, in which 
Landau, J., joined.
Case Summary: Personal representative of deceased foreign exchange stu-
dent’s estate brought negligence action against owners and operators of underage 
nightclub and the organizations that operated the foreign exchange program. 
Defendants moved to dismiss plaintiff’s complaint under ORCP 21 A(8) on the 
ground that plaintiff had failed to state facts sufficient to constitute a claim for 
relief with respect to the issue whether the decedent’s death was a foreseeable 
result of defendants’ conduct. The trial court granted defendants’ motions. The 
Court of Appeals reversed, holding that plaintiff’s complaint sufficiently alleged 
facts which, if proved, would permit a trier of fact to find that it was reasonably 
foreseeable to the club defendants that people standing outside the club late at 
night were at risk of harm from violent assault and that decedent’s death was 
within that general class of harm. Likewise, the Court of Appeals held, the com-
plaint’s allegations, if proved, would permit a reasonable juror to find that the 
foreign exchange program defendants’ conduct exposed decedent to a foreseeable 
risk of violent assault and that the type of harm that befell the decedent was 
within that general class. Held: (1) Plaintiff’s allegations detailing a history of 
violent assaults—including gun violence—at and in the neighboring vicinity of 
the club, combined with allegations of a known risk of such violence in the future, 
would permit a reasonable trier of fact to determine that a reasonable person in 
the position of the club defendants would have foreseen a risk of violent assault 
on the public sidewalk outside the club, where underage patrons were queued up 
to enter, and would also permit a reasonable trier of fact to find that the harm 
that befell decedent was within the class of harms at risk; and (2) plaintiff’s 
allegations that the prior violent assaults in and around the club were publicized 
in the media and that the foreign exchange program defendants knew or should 
have known of the dangers of leaving the decedent at the club under the described 
circumstances would permit a reasonable trier of fact to find that a reasonable 
person in the position of the foreign exchange program defendants would have 
foreseen the risk of violent assault on the public sidewalk where they left dece-
dent, and would also permit a reasonable trier of fact to find that the harm that 
befell decedent fell within the class of harms of which those defendants were 
alleged to have been aware.
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. The judgment of the circuit 
court dismissing this action is reversed, and the case is remanded to the circuit 
court for further proceedings.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
61
	
BREWER, J.
	
In this negligence action, plaintiff, the personal 
representative of the estate of Martha Delgado, alleged in 
her complaint1 that Delgado—a foreign exchange student 
staying in this country under the supervision of defendants 
Rotary International and Rotary International District 
5100 (the Rotary defendants)—was shot and killed by an 
assailant while standing in line on a public sidewalk outside 
the Zone, a teenage nightclub in Portland owned by several 
business entities (the Zone defendants).2
	
On defendants’ motion, the trial court dismissed 
plaintiff’s complaint on the ground that plaintiff had failed 
to state facts sufficient to constitute a claim for relief with 
respect to the issue whether Delgado’s death was a foresee-
able result of defendants’ conduct. See ORCP 21 A(8) (pro-
viding for dismissal for “failure to state ultimate facts suf-
ficient to constitute a claim”). A divided panel of the Court 
of Appeals reversed the ensuing judgment dismissing this 
action. Piazza v. Kellim, 271 Or App 490, 354 P3d 698 (2015). 
On review, we conclude that plaintiff alleged facts that—if 
proved—were sufficient to permit a reasonable juror to find 
that Delgado’s death was a reasonably foreseeable result of 
defendants’ conduct. Accordingly, we affirm the decision of 
the Court of Appeals, and we reverse the judgment dismiss-
ing this action and remand to the trial court.
I.  FACTS AND PROCEDURAL HISTORY
A.  The Complaint
	
Because this is an appeal from a trial court judg-
ment dismissing a complaint under ORCP 21 A(8), we 
assume that all well-pleaded facts are true and give plaintiff 
the benefit of all favorable inferences that reasonably may 
be drawn from those factual allegations. See, e.g., Caba v. 
Barker, 341 Or 534, 536, 145 P3d 174 (2006) (stating stan-
dard of review). Plaintiff alleged that Delgado, age 17, was 
staying with a host family in White Salmon, Washington, as 
	
1  Plaintiff’s operative pleading was a second amended complaint; for ease of 
reference, we refer to that pleading as the complaint.
	
2  The Zone defendants are Five Stars, Inc., Concept Real Estate, LLC, and 
Concept Entertainment Group, Ltd.
62	
Piazza v. Kellim
part of an international exchange program sponsored and 
managed by the Rotary defendants. On January 24, 2009, 
a group of approximately 14 Rotary exchange students, 
including Delgado, gathered at the home of the host parents 
of one of the students for a birthday celebration. Later in the 
evening, the host parents drove the group to the Zone. The 
Zone was an underage nightclub that admitted people ages 
16 to 21 and featured dancing. The Zone was located in the 
“Old Town/Chinatown neighborhood” bordering downtown 
Portland; it also was part of what is referred to by police 
as the “downtown entertainment district,” which consists of 
several streets where nightclubs and bars are located. The 
Zone frequently had a “cordoned-off line of customers on the 
sidewalk outside the club waiting to get in.” The host par-
ents dropped the students off near the Zone without a chap-
erone and planned to pick them up at 1:00 a.m.
	
Delgado and the other exchange students were 
waiting on the sidewalk to get into the Zone when an assail-
ant, Ayala, shot Delgado twice. Delgado died as a result 
of her injuries. Ayala, who previously had been diagnosed 
with schizophrenia and had exhibited obvious signs of 
mental illness and depression to coworkers, “went to the 
Zone nightclub looking to shoot ‘preppies’ or ‘pop tweens,’ 
against who[m] he may have held a grudge.” Before shooting 
Delgado, Ayala had stood in front of the Zone and loaded his 
pistol.
	
Delgado’s shooting was not the first at that particu-
lar location. In July 2002, a shooter fired into a crowd of peo-
ple standing outside the nightclub, striking three people. At 
that time, the club had a different name, but it was owned 
and operated by the Zone defendants. There also had been a 
“history of fights and assaults in the line outside the night-
club.” In addition, the area surrounding the Zone had expe-
rienced violent crimes before the 2009 shooting. In the years 
preceding the 2009 shooting, the downtown entertainment 
district was “plagued by recurrent incidents of violence,” 
which were “linked by police to gang activity and to clubs 
in the district exceeding capacity and serving too much 
alcohol.” In 2005, a series of shootings left two people dead 
and four injured. “It was known by Portland police and club 
owners alike that there was a high probability that more 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
63
shootings would take place in the downtown entertainment 
district.” As a consequence, police “blanketed the downtown 
entertainment district with police officers to ease fear.” The 
effort, which was called “Operation Safe Streets,” included 
at least two dozen police officers patrolling on foot and horse-
back on Friday and Saturday nights through early morn-
ing, and gang enforcement officers, traffic safety officers, 
parole officers, and liquor control investigators were also on 
patrol. Owners of area nightclubs were asked to close early 
on weekend nights and were advised to have adequate secu-
rity, cut off all intoxicated customers, and respond swiftly to 
problems or notify police.
	
After violence continued in the downtown entertain-
ment district, in August 2006, Portland police called a “bar 
summit” with owners and managers of downtown bars and 
nightclubs to help them adopt policies to reduce violence. At 
the meeting, which included a representative of one of the 
Zone defendants, businesses and police addressed, among 
other issues, the shootings in the Old Town/Chinatown 
neighborhood. At the summit, police and businesses also 
addressed whether the violence on downtown sidewalks 
and in parking lots was related to intoxicated club-goers (as 
police believed) or drug dealers (as clubs contended).3
	
By January 2009, the Old Town/Chinatown neigh-
borhood “had approximately fourteen agencies serving 
addicted, mentally ill, and homeless people, more than any 
other neighborhood in the city, with thousands of clients 
coming to the area every day. Many of those clients bought 
drugs.” “Drug dealers, drug users and gang members, all 
of whom frequented the area where the Zone nightclub was 
located, frequently carried weapons * 
* 
*.” “[S]ome club own-
ers, realizing that their clients were in danger of violent 
assault, increased security at their bars and nightclubs.” In 
2006, a principal of one of the Zone defendants “acknowl-
edged downtown safety problems, but said they were created 
	
3  The Zone was located in what used to be one of Portland’s “Drug Free 
Zones,” in which anyone convicted of a drug offense could be barred from return-
ing. The drug-free-zone program expired in 2007, and “drug dealers and addicts 
took over Portland’s Chinatown/Old Town neighborhood,” which police officers 
came to refer to as “crack alley.” “Residents complained of being terrorized by an 
increasingly aggressive and confrontational breed of drug users and sellers.”
64	
Piazza v. Kellim
by ‘a few bad apples,’ and that police, liquor control, and oth-
ers should “work together for the benefit of club-goers.”
	
Before the shooting, the Zone had undertaken some 
measures to provide security for customers inside and out-
side the club. Those measures included:
“(a)  The Zone had an employee whose primary responsi-
bility was monitoring customers as they come and go from 
the club. The employee was to assist in line control; to dis-
tance ‘undesirables,’ i.e. intoxicated persons, harassers, 
transients, known trouble makers, or gang affiliated per-
sons from guests; and to monitor the parking lot and deter 
potential guests from loitering in or around their cars;
“(b)  The Zone nightclub had a security camera that mon-
itored the outside of their establishment;
“(c)  The Zone nightclub had a security guard or door-
person at the door outside of the premises who frisked 
everyone before entry, checking for drugs, alcohol, fire-
arms, or other weapons;
“(d)  In the past, the Zone had hired off-duty police officers 
to provide security for their customers; [and]
“(e)  On or about 2006, [t]he Zone nightclub remodeled its 
facilities in the hopes of attracting a better clientele and 
reducing problems at the club including violence.”
Thus, plaintiff alleged, the Zone defendants “knew about 
the risk of violence that its customers faced.”
	
Plaintiff further alleged that underage nightclubs 
generally are understood to pose “inherent” risks of violence 
because of the high proportion of young male patrons, high 
noise levels, crowding, competitive environment, and under-
age drinking. “A metropolitan nightclub may see as many as 
three or four assaults on staff each night and are often con-
fronted with armed patrons. Shootings, stabbings, felonious 
assaults, drug violations, and/or murders are commonplace 
in metropolitan nightclubs across the country.” In fact, 
several cities around the country “have banned or heavily 
regulated teen dance clubs.” According to plaintiff’s alle-
gations, the instances of violence that “occurred nationally 
at underage nightclubs and locally in the area around the 
Zone nightclub were all publicized in local and/or national 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
65
media, and [the Rotary defendants] knew, or in the exercise 
of reasonable care, should have known, about the dangers of 
leaving [Delgado] at the Zone nightclub on the date and at 
the time in question.”
	
Plaintiff alleged that the Zone defendants owed a 
duty to Delgado, who was their business invitee, to exercise 
reasonable care to make the premises safe for her, including 
protection from criminal acts by third parties. Plaintiff fur-
ther alleged that the Zone defendants breached that duty:
“(a)  In failing to take reasonable measures to protect 
their customers from the criminal acts of third parties;
“(b)  In making their customers stand in line in front of 
the club;
“(c)  In failing to have sufficient security personnel to pro-
tect their customers;
“(d)  In failing to properly train their staff to identify 
threats to their customers;
“(e)  In failing to identify * 
* 
* Ayala as a threat while he 
was in front of [t]he Zone;
“(f)  In failing to have adequate emergency response pro-
cedures in place to protect customers once a threat was 
identified; [and]
“(g)  In failing to warn their customers or the parents of 
their customers about the risk of being assaulted while 
patronizing [t]he Zone nightclub.”
	
With regard to the Rotary defendants, plaintiff 
alleged that Delgado lived with a host family under the 
“auspices, sponsorship, and control” of the Rotary defen-
dants and that the host parents were the Rotary defen-
dants’ agents. Plaintiff alleged that the Rotary defendants 
were authorized to exercise “independent supervisory and 
parental responsibility to safeguard [Delgado’s] physical 
and mental well-being,” and, thus, that a special relation-
ship between Delgado and the Rotary defendants “gave 
rise to a heightened duty of care beyond the general duty to 
avoid foreseeable risk of harm.” According to plaintiff, the 
Rotary defendants, directly or acting through their agents, 
breached that duty:
66	
Piazza v. Kellim
“(a)  In failing to provide host parents with sufficient 
training so as to reasonably ensure the safety of the 
students;
“(b)  In leaving the students unsupervised, late at night in 
a high crime area;
“(c)  In failing to adopt and enforce reasonable rules and 
regulations to ensure the safety of the students;
“(d)  In failing to adopt reasonable rules and regulations 
regarding travel to prevent the students from being left 
alone in dangerous areas; [and]
“(e)  In failing to properly and adequately warn all the stu-
dents and their parents of the dangers of being left unsu-
pervised in a high crime area.”4
B.  The Motions to Dismiss
	
The Zone defendants and Rotary defendants each 
moved under ORCP 21 A(8) to dismiss plaintiff’s claims 
against them on the ground that plaintiff had failed to allege 
a foreseeable risk of harm to Delgado. Defendants argued 
that plaintiff’s negligence claims reduced to the following 
theory: (1) criminals were more likely to commit crimes 
in the area in which the Zone was located; (2) defendants 
knew or should have known of that fact; and (3) Delgado 
was killed in that “high crime area.” Those allegations, 
defendants argued, failed to establish a foreseeable risk of 
the particular crime that killed Delgado, which defendants 
characterized as a “random spree shooting” against a par-
ticular class of person (“preppies”). According to defendants, 
such a shooting was just as likely to occur at a mall, a movie 
theater, or an ice cream parlor; thus, “the occurrence of a 
random spree shooting in a high crime area does not make it 
any more foreseeable than if it occurred in a place one would 
normally deem safe, such as a movie theater or a school.” 
Indeed, the “randomness” of shootings like the one that 
killed Delgado, defendants argued, “means that when and 
	
4  The Rotary defendants ask this court to take judicial notice, pursuant 
to OEC 201, of certain facts relating to the shooting incident in this case that 
are not alleged in plaintiff’s complaint. In light of the procedural posture of our 
review of the judgment dismissing this action based on a motion to dismiss under 
ORCP 21 A(8), we decline that request, which was made for the first time before 
this court.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
67
where they occur are not foreseeable, as that term is used in 
Oregon tort law.”
	
Plaintiff, meanwhile, argued that defendants’ argu-
ments misapprehended what it means for a risk of harm to 
be reasonably foreseeable under Oregon case law. In plain-
tiff’s view, “[f]oreseeability in this case does not turn on 
being able to foresee ‘random spree shootings,’ but rather on 
foreseeing the risk of a violent criminal assault” to Delgado. 
“[T]he dangerous character of the nightclub, its location and 
its violent history,” plaintiff asserted, “would allow a jury to 
conclude that the harm in this case was foreseeable.” She 
explained that “[t]here are many foreseeable ways in which 
the assault might have taken place[.] * 
* 
* Even if an assault 
by a mentally ill person is somehow unusual or unexpected, 
the resulting harm was legally foreseeable because it was 
within the class of reasonably foreseeable hazards” at the 
Zone.
	
The trial court ultimately agreed with defendants, 
ruling that the shooting that killed Delgado was unfore-
seeable as a matter of law. The court subsequently entered 
limited judgments that dismissed all claims against both 
the Zone defendants and the Rotary defendants. Plaintiff 
appealed those limited judgments and argued before the 
Court of Appeals, as she did before the trial court, that her 
complaint alleged facts that, if proved, were sufficient to 
establish a reasonably foreseeable risk of the type of harm 
that befell Delgado.
C.  The Court of Appeals Decision
	
As noted, the Court of Appeals reversed. As to the 
Zone defendants, relying on several of this court’s previous 
decisions, the Court of Appeals concluded that plaintiff had 
alleged sufficient facts that, if proved, would permit a trier 
of fact to find that (1) it was reasonably foreseeable to the 
Zone defendants that people standing in line outside the Zone 
late at night were at risk of harm from violent assault; and 
(2) Delgado’s death was within that general class of harm. 
Piazza, 271 Or App at 509, 510-11. The court further concluded 
that the circumstances alleged in the complaint were not “so 
highly unusual, or the sequence of events so attenuated, that 
68	
Piazza v. Kellim
no reasonable person in the Zone defendants’ position could 
have anticipated the harm to Delgado.” Id. at 512. Indeed, the 
court opined, “[a] jury could find, based on the facts alleged 
in the complaint, that the link between Ayala’s crime, the 
Zone defendants’ conduct, and Delgado’s death was relatively 
straightforward”; defendants exposed Delgado to a risk of 
harm from violent assault when they left her to line up and 
wait on the street in a high-crime area, where a criminal 
could approach the line and shoot at the Zone’s business invi-
tees. Id. Therefore, the Court of Appeals reasoned, plaintiff 
had satisfied her pleading burden with respect to the issue of 
foreseeability as to the Zone defendants.
	
For similar reasons, as to the Rotary defendants, 
the Court of Appeals concluded that the complaint suffi-
ciently alleged foreseeability of the risk of harm in at least 
one of plaintiff’s specifications of negligence—leaving the 
students in a high-crime area—to withstand a motion to 
dismiss plaintiff’s claim under ORCP 21 A(8).5 Piazza, 271 
Or App at 513-14. Plaintiff alleged that prior crimes in and 
around the Zone were “publicized in local and/or national 
media, and [the Rotary defendants] knew, or in the exercise 
of reasonable care, should have known, about the dangers of 
leaving [plaintiff] at [the Zone] on the date and at the time 
in question.” Id. The court concluded, from those facts, that 
a reasonable juror could find that the host parents’ conduct 
had exposed Delgado to a reasonably foreseeable risk of vio-
lent assault and that the type of harm that actually befell 
her was within that general class. Id. at 514.
	
Judge Edmonds dissented. As he saw the case,
“the very tragic specific harm that befell plaintiff’s dece-
dent was the result of a random shooter who was mentally 
ill and who undertook to shoot ‘preppies.’ The randomness 
of his criminal target demonstrates that it could have just 
as well have been committed at a soccer or football game, 
an outside youth church or synagogue gathering, a mall, 
a public or private school event, or any place where young 
people typically gather. Giving plaintiff the benefit of all 
reasonable inferences, it was a mere happenstance that 
	
5  The parties do not discuss plaintiff’s remaining specifications of negligence 
as to the Rotary defendants. Accordingly, we do not consider them further.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
69
the shooter chose the line of young people outside the Zone 
defendant’s club as his target. For purposes of reasonable 
foreseeability, a specific risk of harm is only within the 
scope of a general risk of harm if the specific risk of harm 
resulting in the injury is qualitatively similar to other fore-
seeable specific risks of harm that fall within a general 
risk of harm. That test is not satisfied by plaintiff’s allega-
tions. The circumstances of the random shooting spree in 
this case are unrelated to plaintiff’s ‘high crime area’ alle-
gations. For these reasons, the specific risk of harm from 
a random shooting spree like the one in this case is not 
within the general risk of harm alleged by plaintiff.”
Piazza, 271 Or App at 522-23 (Edmonds, S. J., dissenting).
	
Echoing Judge Edmonds’ dissent, all defendants 
assert on review that the type of crime that occurred—
which they describe as a “random spree shooting”—was 
unforeseeable as a matter of law. They argue that the Court 
of Appeals majority erred by describing the scope of the 
risk of harm too generally and by relying on the occurrence 
of prior crimes that were dissimilar to the circumstances 
of the crime at issue. In short, they assert that the Court 
of Appeals expanded the concept of general risk of harm 
beyond the practical realities of what business operators, 
parents, and adult supervisors should reasonably anticipate 
as risks of harm. Defendants also assert that courts in other 
jurisdictions have limited liability in circumstances such as 
those present here.
	
Plaintiff responds that this court’s prior decisions 
have held that a plaintiff need not allege and prove the pre-
dictability of the actual sequence of events that caused the 
harm in question, but rather, must plead and prove facts 
showing a generalized risk of the types of incidents and inju-
ries that occurred. Plaintiff urges that, under that frame-
work—where all reasonably foreseeable risks of harm are 
relevant, not merely the particular harm that actually befell 
Delgado—plaintiff’s factual allegations were sufficient to 
state a claim with respect to foreseeability.
II.  ANALYSIS
	
The concept of foreseeability embodies a prospective 
judgment about a course of events; it “therefore ordinarily 
70	
Piazza v. Kellim
depends on the facts of a concrete situation” and, if dis-
puted, is a jury question. Fazzolari v. Portland School Dist. 
No. 1J, 303 Or 1, 4, 734 P2d 1326 (1987).6 Foreseeability 
plays a role in at least two overlapping common-law negli-
gence determinations: (1) whether the defendant’s conduct 
unreasonably created a foreseeable risk of harm to a pro-
tected interest of the plaintiff such that the defendant may 
be held liable for that conduct—formerly described in terms 
of “duty” and “breach” as measures of negligent conduct; 
and (2) whether, because the risk of harm was reasonably 
foreseeable, the defendant may be held liable to the plaintiff 
for the particular harm that befell the plaintiff—a concept 
that traditionally was referred to as “proximate” cause and 
which, in our current analytical framework, operates as a 
legal limit on the scope of a defendant’s liability for negligent 
conduct. See generally Fazzolari, 303 Or at 11-18 (describing 
role of foreseeability in negligence determinations formerly 
described in terms of duty-breach and proximate cause); see 
also Deckard v. Bunch, 358 Or 754, 761, 370 P3d 478 (2016). 
In synthesis,
	
6  Although often described as an “issue of fact,” id., it is more precise to 
describe the foreseeability determination as a blended factual and normative—
that is, value-laden—inquiry that ordinarily is committed to juries. As one com-
mentator has explained,
“[W]hen ‘foreseeable’ is used in what seems to be a kind of factual sense, as a 
prediction or anticipation, there is no implicit degree of likelihood in the ref-
erence. It may run from possible through likely and probable and even on up 
to certainty. * 
* 
* When ‘foreseeable’ is used in the context of determining if 
a defendant acted unreasonably, not in the fashion of the reasonable person, 
then the degree of likelihood can be factored in among all the variables enter-
ing into the calculus of harm, thus giving it a pragmatic use. In this context 
‘foreseeable’ is modified explicitly or implicitly by ‘reasonably.’
	
“* 
* 
* 
* 
*
	
“More subtle is the use of ‘foreseeable’ in a mode that is not purely fac-
tual or predictive. To say that something is or was foreseeable can trigger an 
interpretation that it is being used in the purely predictive mode because the 
verb ‘to be’ is so often used as if information is being provided, although often 
opinion or value judgments are involved. Comparison with a lay use of ‘fore-
seeable’ may be instructive. If a passenger in an automobile were to say to 
the driver, ‘If you keep driving like this, it’s foreseeable we’ll have a wreck,’ or 
just, ‘You’re risking our lives,’ it is not likely he is only conveying information. 
It is a warning and a call for different behavior. Likewise, after the wreck, for 
someone to say, ‘Well, it sure was foreseeable,’ is to imply that it could have 
been prevented and likely that it should have been.”
Walter Probert, Torts and Language, 48 Fla L Rev 841, 854-55 (1996) (footnotes 
omitted).
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
71
“unless the parties invoke a status, a relationship, or a par-
ticular standard of conduct that creates, defines, or limits 
the defendant’s duty, the issue of liability for harm actually 
resulting from defendant’s conduct properly depends on 
whether that conduct unreasonably created a foreseeable 
risk to a protected interest of the kind of harm that befell 
the plaintiff. The role of the court is what it ordinarily 
is in cases involving the evaluation of particular situa-
tions under broad and imprecise standards: to determine 
whether upon the facts alleged or the evidence presented 
no reasonable factfinder could decide one or more elements 
of liability for one or the other party.”
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17.
	
Under that framework, in effect, the more traditional 
duty-breach and proximate cause analyses in a common-law 
negligence claim are subsumed in the question whether the 
defendant’s conduct resulted in a reasonably foreseeable and 
unreasonable risk of harm to a protected interest of the kind 
that the plaintiff suffered. Towe v. Sacagawea, Inc., 357 Or 
74, 86, 346 P3d 1207 (2015).7 But, as the passage quoted 
above from Fazzolari observes, the duty-breach analysis is 
not always subsumed in a foreseeability analysis. Rather, 
the nature and scope of the duty owed by the defendant to 
the plaintiff can be created, defined, or limited based on, 
among other things, the relationship between or status of 
	
7  Although uniform jury instructions are not sources of law, it often is useful 
to consider how sometimes elusive legal principles are understood and applied in 
practice by the trial judges and lawyers who are charged with following them. To 
that end, Oregon’s Uniform Civil Jury Instructions describe the overlapping roles 
of foreseeability in the following way. Under UCJI 20.01, the jury is instructed 
to determine whether (1) “[t]he defendant’s conduct was negligent”; (2) the defen-
dant’s negligence “was a cause of harm to the plaintiff”; and (3) “[t]he harm was 
reasonably foreseeable.” UCJI 20.02 provides that a “person’s conduct is negligent 
if that person fails to use reasonable care.” That instruction further provides:
“In deciding whether a person used reasonable care, consider the dangers 
apparent or reasonably foreseeable when the events occurred.”
A separate uniform jury instruction based on Fazzolari, UCJI 20.03, addresses 
the issue of foreseeability as a limit on liability:
“A person is liable only for the reasonably foreseeable consequences of his or 
her actions. There are two things that must be foreseeable. First, the plain-
tiff must be within the general class of persons that one reasonably would 
anticipate might be threatened by the defendant’s conduct. Second, the harm 
suffered must be within the general class of harms that one reasonably would 
anticipate might result from the defendant’s conduct.”
72	
Piazza v. Kellim
the parties. Towe, 357 Or at 86. So understood, our thresh-
old inquiry is whether plaintiff has invoked a particular sta-
tus or relationship that affects our analysis.
	
In her complaint, plaintiff invoked two special 
relationships that informed defendants’ obligations toward 
Delgado, which defendants have not challenged at this point 
in the litigation. The first, which plaintiff invoked as to the 
Zone defendants, is the relationship between possessors of 
land and persons whom they invite onto their premises. As 
possessors of premises, the Zone defendants had an obliga-
tion to take reasonable steps to protect the nightclub’s visi-
tors from reasonably foreseeable criminal acts by third per-
sons. See, e.g., Uihlein v. Albertson’s, Inc., 282 Or 631, 639, 
580 P2d 1014 (1978) (noting that this court previously had 
adopted standard set out in Restatement (Second) of Torts 
section 344 comment f (1965) “as being a part of the law of 
this state”).8 The second special relationship, which plain-
tiff invoked with respect to the Rotary defendants, is the 
relationship between a child and a person entrusted with 
that child’s care. For example, schools have a special duty to 
students “apart from any general responsibility not unrea-
sonably to expose people to a foreseeable risk of harm,” and 
the “scope of th[at] obligation does not exclude precautions 
against risks of crime or torts merely because a third person 
inflicts the injury.” Fazzolari, 303 Or at 19, 20.
	
In both special relationships asserted by plaintiff, 
the obligation to protect against risks of harm—includ-
ing the risk of harm from third-party criminal acts—is 
broader than that which might apply in the absence of such 
	
8  Restatement section 344, comment f states:
	
“Since the possessor is not an insurer of the visitor’s safety, he is ordi-
narily under no duty to exercise any care until he knows or has reason to 
know that the acts of the third person are occurring, or are about to occur. 
He may, however, know or have reason to know, from past experience, that 
there is a likelihood of conduct on the part of third persons in general which 
is likely to endanger the safety of the visitor, even though he has no reason to 
expect it on the part of any particular individual. If the place or character of 
his business, or his past experience, is such that he should reasonably antic-
ipate careless or criminal conduct on the part of third persons, either gener-
ally or at some particular time, he may be under a duty to take precautions 
against it, and to provide a reasonably sufficient number of servants to afford 
a reasonable protection.”
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
73
a relationship, but, because those relationships do not pre-
scribe a particular scope of duty, that obligation does not 
extend to risks that are not reasonably foreseeable. Id. at 
16-17, 20.9 Thus, although each defendant is alleged to have 
had a special relationship with Delgado and a corresponding 
duty to take reasonable precautions to protect her against 
criminal conduct by third parties, those duties extended to 
only reasonably foreseeable criminal conduct. See id.
	
In this case, defendants do not dispute, based on 
the facts alleged in plaintiff’s complaint, that they held the 
asserted special relationships toward Delgado, under which 
they had obligations to take reasonable precautions to pro-
tect Delgado against foreseeable risks of harm. Nor have 
defendants asserted that plaintiffs’ allegations are insuffi-
cient, if proved, and if the risk of harm to Delgado otherwise 
was foreseeable, to establish that defendants failed to use 
reasonable care to protect Delgado from harm. Stated dif-
ferently, apart from their general foreseeability challenge, 
defendants do not separately assert that plaintiffs’ alle-
gations were insufficient to establish, if proved, that their 
conduct was negligent.10 Instead, as framed by defendants’ 
motions, the only question before us is whether plaintiff’s 
complaint alleged sufficient facts to withstand an ORCP 21 
A(8) motion with respect to the issue of foreseeability as a 
legal limit on the scope of defendants’ liability.
	
The question is whether plaintiff has alleged facts 
sufficient, if proved, to permit a jury determination that 
reasonable persons in defendants’ positions would have 
	
9  Even when a special relationship is the basis for the duty of care owed by 
one person to another, this court has held that, if the special relationship (or 
status or standard of conduct) does not prescribe a particular scope of duty, then 
“[c]ommon law principles of reasonable care and foreseeability of harm are rele-
vant.” Cain v. Rijken, 300 Or 706, 717, 717 P2d 140 (1986) (quoted with approval in 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 16-17); see also Oregon Steel Mills, Inc. v. Coopers & Lybrand, 
LLP, 336 Or 329, 342, 83 P3d 322 (2004).
	
10  It follows that issues pertaining to whether defendants were negligent, 
such as “the feasibility and cost of avoiding the risk,” which “bear on the rea-
sonableness of defendant’s conduct,” are not before us. See Donaca v. Curry Co., 
303 Or 30, 38-39, 734 P2d 1339 (1987) (explaining difference between general 
foreseeability and duty/breach issues; whether county was negligent for failing 
to maintain right-of-way depended on whether county’s action was reasonable 
in light of risk, including feasibility and cost of avoiding risk); see also Hughes v. 
Wilson, 345 Or 491, 502, 199 P3d 305 (2008) (applying principle).
74	
Piazza v. Kellim
foreseen a risk to Delgado’s safety “of the kind of harm that 
befell” her. See Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17. “The community’s 
judgment, usually given voice by a jury, determines whether 
the defendant’s conduct met that threshold in the factual 
circumstances of any particular case.” Chapman v. Mayfield, 
358 Or 196, 206, 361 P3d 566 (2015). “The court intervenes 
only when it can say that the actor’s conduct clearly meets 
the standard or clearly falls below it.” Fazzolari, 303 Or at 
18 (quoting Stewart v. Jefferson Plywood Co., 255 Or 603, 
607, 469 P2d 783 (1970)).
	
In Stewart, this court elaborated on the nature of a 
court’s role in the foreseeability determination. In that case, 
the plaintiff volunteered to assist in putting out a fire that 
the defendant had started at one plant and that then had 
spread to an adjacent warehouse. The plaintiff and others 
were hoisted to the roof of the warehouse by a forklift. In 
attempting to put out the fire, plaintiff fell through a cov-
ered skylight—covered by corrugated plastic and a film of 
dust so that it was indistinguishable from the rest of the 
roof—to the warehouse floor, suffering injuries. The ques-
tion, the court said, was “whether plaintiff’s injury and the 
manner of its occurrence was so highly unusual that we can 
say as a matter of law that a reasonable man * 
* 
* would not 
have reasonably expected the injury to occur.” Stewart, 255 
Or at 609.
	
The answer required identification of a court’s 
proper gate-keeping role:
	
“The temptation here is to leave the question to the jury 
where the problem can be solved by an intuitive process, 
thus relieving us from the judicial task of reaching a rea-
soned conclusion. Unfortunately, however, we have inher-
ited the duty to exercise control over the jury and to keep it 
within the bounds set for it, vague as they may be.”
Id. at 607. On the facts presented, the court held:
	
“A reasonable man could foresee that a fire started by 
him might spread to his neighbor’s building and that in the 
effort to extinguish the fire his neighbor or a third person 
coming to his aid might be injured as a result of a variety 
of possible circumstances—by being burned, by falling off 
a ladder, by falling off a roof, by falling through a burned 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
75
portion of the roof, or by other similar risks normally asso-
ciated with fighting fires.
	
“It is less likely that an injury would occur as a result 
of falling through a skylight and even less likely that one 
would fall through a skylight because it was covered in a 
manner that made it appear to be a solid part of the roof. 
But, although such conditions may not be a common cause 
of injury, on the other hand it cannot be said that this set-
ting for possible injury is so uncommon that a jury could 
not reasonably describe as foreseeable the risk of harm 
which it creates.”
Id. at 610. In short, the circumstances, although unusual, 
were not “out of the range within which a jury could deter-
mine that the injury was reasonably foreseeable.” Id. at 
609-10.
	
In a later case involving third-party criminal con-
duct, this court recognized a limit on how generally the 
type of harm at risk can be described. In Buchler v. Oregon 
Corrections Div., 316 Or 499, 853 P2d 798 (1993)—a case on 
which defendants here heavily rely—this court considered 
whether the state could be held liable in negligence for the 
death and serious injury of victims of violence inflicted by an 
escaped prisoner. The prisoner was a member of a work crew 
in a remote location. The crew supervisor had left a state 
van’s keys in the ignition. The prisoner escaped in the van, 
drove 50 miles to his mother’s house, stole a gun, and, two 
days after the escape, shot two people, killing one of them. 
The trial court granted the state’s summary judgment 
motion, and, on review, the plaintiffs’ claims raised several 
issues concerning foreseeability relating to the plaintiffs’ 
various theories of negligence.
	
One foreseeability issue in Buchler concerned the 
plaintiffs’ claim that the state had facilitated the harm to 
the victims by leaving the van’s keys in the ignition. Id. at 
507. The court explained that describing the type of harm 
at risk too generally—such as stating that criminals com-
mit crimes or that escaped prisoners may commit crimes 
while at large—makes criminal acts the legal responsibility 
of everyone who may have contributed in some way to the 
criminal opportunity. Id. at 511. Such a conception would 
76	
Piazza v. Kellim
sweep too broadly because “mere ‘facilitation’ of an unin-
tended adverse result, where intervening intentional crim-
inality of another person is the harm-producing force, does 
not cause the harm so as to support liability for it.” Id. at 
511-12. The court in Buchler ultimately concluded as a mat-
ter of law that the harm that the plaintiffs suffered was not 
a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the risk created by 
leaving the keys in the van. Id. at 514. In doing so, the court 
clarified that, for a jury question to arise with respect to 
foreseeability, the relevant risk of harm must be reasonably 
foreseeable. Id.
	
In keeping with its focus in Stewart, Fazzolari, and 
Buchler, this court recently has emphasized the centrality—
in determining whether a triable issue has been established 
with respect to foreseeability—of the plaintiff’s description 
of the injury-producing factual circumstances in the context 
of her theory of liability:
“[A]s part of determining whether the defendant’s conduct 
was unreasonable, there is nothing surprising about a con-
ception of foreseeability that assesses the overall ‘setting 
for possible injury’ under the plaintiff’s theory of liability. 
Drawing on the plaintiff’s theory of liability, the court in 
Stewart determined that it was not unlikely that an ‘injury 
would occur in this manner in the course of fighting a fire.’ 
”
Chapman, 358 Or at 208 (citations omitted); see also 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 22 (stating that, where school knew of 
assaults at specific locations on school property, trier of fact 
could find that school should have warned students of that 
general risk, which included risk of rape).
	
In Chapman, this court held, in reviewing a grant 
of summary judgment, that the trial court had properly dis-
missed the plaintiff’s action against a tavern that allegedly 
had over-served a visibly intoxicated patron who, in turn, left 
the tavern on foot, walked down the street to another busi-
ness establishment, and unintentionally fired a concealed 
handgun through the door, injuring two people inside. 358 
Or at 198. To establish foreseeability, the plaintiff primarily 
relied on (1) expert opinion evidence that intoxicated persons 
frequently become violent and that medical, scientific, and 
lay journals have documented a connection between violence 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
77
and alcohol for decades; and (2) experiential observations by 
a bartender at another tavern in the vicinity about the link 
between alcohol and violence. Id. at 220. We concluded that 
the plaintiff’s pleading and evidence did not create a triable 
issue of fact with respect to foreseeability. We explained:
“[E]ven though the precise mechanism of harm need not 
be foreseeable, it is necessary to describe the type of harm 
at risk and the class of plaintiffs at risk with reference to 
the particular factual circumstances of the case, as gleaned 
from the pleadings and evidence in the record. Based on 
the circumstances of this case, we conclude that the appro-
priate characterization of the type of harm at issue is an 
unintentional attack by a visibly intoxicated patron after 
he had left defendant’s premises. Cf. Fazzolari, 303 Or at 
21-22 (characterizing type of harm from failing to pro-
vide adequate warning or security as an assault on stu-
dents at school); Stewart, 255 Or at 610 (describing type 
of harm from negligently setting fire as injuries that may 
occur while attempting to extinguish fire). We further con-
clude that plaintiffs’ evidence was insufficient because it 
described the risk of harm too generally.
	
“As explained, evidence that it is common knowledge 
that intoxicated people have impaired judgment and may, 
therefore, behave improperly is too general to establish 
that a person who serves a visibly intoxicated person rea-
sonably should expect that that person will commit an 
assault. Evidence making the bare assertion that it is com-
mon knowledge that visibly intoxicated persons frequently 
become violent is no more sufficient. Such evidence does not 
create a permissible inference that a particular defendant 
should have been aware of an unreasonable risk of violent 
harm or that a particular plaintiff was within the class of 
persons at risk of such harm.”
Chapman, 358 Or at 220-21.
	
Other, more specific evidence—such as evidence 
showing the rate of incidence of violence among intoxicated 
drinkers, the types of intoxicated drinkers who become vio-
lent, or the class of persons at risk of violent harm from a 
visibly intoxicated person—could have been adduced in 
Chapman that may have permitted different inferences so 
as to preclude summary judgment. The omission of such evi-
dence, we held, distinguished the circumstances in Chapman 
78	
Piazza v. Kellim
from those in Stewart, where this court was willing, in the 
absence of more direct evidence, to use general knowledge 
to supply an inference that the risk of harm was reasonably 
foreseeable. Id. at 221; see Stewart, 255 Or at 611 (although 
record did not contain statistics on frequency of injuries 
resulting from falling through concealed skylights, “general 
knowledge” of manner in which injuries occur supported 
foreseeability of how injury could occur in such manner). The 
plaintiff’s evidentiary proffer in Chapman did not include 
facts that would support an inference—based on general 
knowledge—that it was reasonably foreseeable to the defen-
dant that the visibly intoxicated patron would unintention-
ally attack the plaintiffs at a different location. Chapman, 
358 Or at 222; see Buchler, 316 Or at 511 (disavowing broad 
conception of foreseeability based on purported “common 
knowledge” connecting thieves, guns, and crimes).11
	
Before summing up the principles that govern our 
analysis, we briefly turn to one of defendants’ primary points 
of emphasis. There is an understandable thirst in this area 
of the law for bright-line rules that—at least in theory—can 
produce predictable results from case to case in negligence 
claims. In urging this court to require a high degree of sim-
ilarity between the nature and circumstances of prior crim-
inal acts and the criminal act at issue here, defendants note 
that some courts have analyzed whether a particular crim-
inal act was reasonably foreseeable based on prior similar 
acts, and others have looked to the place and character of 
the location of the act. See, e.g., McKown v. Simon Property 
Group, Inc., 182 Wash 2d 752, 768-74, 344 P3d 661, 667-70 
(2015) (discussing the two approaches). Courts following the 
“prior similar acts” approach have held that prior acts must 
be sufficiently similar in character to the act at issue before 
the latter can be deemed to have been foreseeable.12
	
11  This court has “cautioned against turning fact-specific decisions on fore-
seeability into rules of law.” Chapman, 358 Or at 222 (quoting Bailey v. Lewis 
Farm, Inc., 343 Or 276, 289, 171 P3d 336 (2007) (citing Fazzolari, 303 Or at 16)). 
In Chapman, we concluded:
“We do not depart from that precept here; rather, our decision turns on the 
specific facts in the record before us.”
Id.
	
12  See, e.g., Romero v. Giant Stop-N-Go of New Mexico, Inc., 146 NM 520, 
212 P3d 408 (2009) (holding that evidence of prior robberies, theft, physical 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
79
	
Under the “place and character” test, courts have 
tended to focus on whether the place and character of a loca-
tion or business “invited” the criminal behavior. See, e.g., 
Early v. N.L.V. Casino Corp., 100 Nev 200, 204, 678 P2d 683, 
685 (1984), partially overruled on other grounds by Moody 
v. Manny’s Auto Repair, 110 Nev 320, 871 P2d 935 (1994). 
In response to a claim that an unprovoked attack at a large 
music festival was foreseeable based on incidents at previ-
ous festivals, and because crime is foreseeable when large 
groups of people gather, the New York Court of Appeals 
held that “[a] random criminal attack of this nature is not 
a predictable result of the gathering of a large group of peo-
ple.” Maheshwari v. City of New York, 2 NY3d 288, 294, 810 
NE2d 894 (2004). In the same vein, the California courts 
have emphasized that “it is difficult if not impossible in 
today’s society to predict when a criminal might strike,” and 
“if a criminal decides on a particular goal or victim, it is 
extremely difficult to remove his every means for achieving 
that goal.” Wiener v. Southcoast Childcare Centers, 32 Cal 
4th 1138, 1147, 1150, 88 P3d 517, 524 (2004).
	
The concerns expressed in the cited cases are rea-
sonable; in fact, they animated in part this court’s rejection 
of the facilitation rationale that the plaintiff in Buchler pre-
sented. We also recognize the relevance of the factors that 
other courts have identified in the foreseeability analysis. 
In many sets of factual circumstances, multiple consider-
ations—including the place and character of the location of 
a criminal act, and the occurrence of prior similar acts—
are relevant. However, as we repeatedly have stated, our 
altercations, domestic violence, harassment, narcotics and suspicious persons at 
same location did not make targeted and deliberate shooting of plaintiff’s dece-
dents foreseeable). Under that approach, courts also have held that the prior acts 
must have happened in the vicinity of the location where the act at issue occurred 
before that act can be deemed foreseeable. See Sigmund v. Starwood Urban Inv., 
475 F Supp 2d 36, 46 (D DC 2007), aff’d, 617 F3d 512 (DC Cir 2010) (looking at 
a five-block radius around area of the attack and concluding that sudden and 
unexpected attack was not foreseeable). In addition, courts using that formula 
have held that the prior acts must have happened relatively recently, Dwiggins 
v. Morgan Jewelers, 811 P2d 182, 183 (Utah 1991) (one robbery five years earlier 
insufficient to make subsequent robbery foreseeable), and with some degree of 
frequency. See Dudas v. Glenwood Golf Club, Inc., 261 Va 133, 140, 540 SE2d 129 
(2001) (two robberies within the month preceding the attack on plaintiff was not 
enough for foreseeability because there was no imminent danger).
80	
Piazza v. Kellim
preference for giving voice to the community’s judgment 
through a jury determination prevails, except in extreme 
cases, where no reasonable person could find that the 
harm that befell the plaintiff was reasonably foreseeable. 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17-18; Stewart, 255 Or at 607. Under 
that framework, a narrow focus on the actual sequence of 
events that led to a particular injury to a particular person 
“misunderstands foreseeable risk.” Towe, 357 Or at 106 n 17. 
A defendant need not have been able to precisely forecast a 
specific harm to a particular person to be held liable. See id. 
This court punctuated that point in Fazzolari when it made 
the following observations about Stewart:
“[T]he Stewart opinion acknowledged that ‘[w]hether 
the harm in a particular case is deemed foreseeable may 
depend upon the manner in which we describe ‘harm.’ This 
is even more true of ‘risk.’ Stewart itself made clear that the 
court meant generalized risk of the types of incidents and 
injuries that occurred rather than the predictability of the 
actual sequence of events. One reasonably might foresee 
that a fire might place others seeking to protect a neigh-
boring building in danger of injury by falling as well as 
by being burned, even though one might not foresee that 
the fall would be through an insecurely covered and hidden 
skylight. So, at least, a jury might find.”
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 13 (citations omitted).
	
Nor is it necessary that a particular quantifiable 
mass of similar types of incidents involving a narrow class of 
victims have occurred at a precise location for a triable issue 
of fact with respect to foreseeability to arise. In Fazzolari, 
for example, a jury question was created by generalized 
and somewhat limited evidence concerning the defendant 
school’s prior experience with criminal activity:
	
“Here there was evidence that a woman reportedly had 
been sexually assaulted on the school grounds 15 days 
before the attack on plaintiff, and plaintiff attempted 
to introduce evidence of various other kinds of attacks. 
Obviously a school’s responsibility for students’ safety 
against assault is not limited to the risk of rape, and evi-
dence of foreseeability will differ depending on whether the 
risk of injury is claimed to be specific to a school, or schools 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
81
generally, or a neighborhood, or a class of potential victims 
such as women or particular ethnic groups.”
Id. at 21 (citation omitted).
	
But that does not mean that the foreseeability 
determination is untethered to principle. As our previous 
decisions show, negligence claims arising from third-party 
criminal acts often involve the defendant’s failure to moni-
tor or screen a dangerous third person or the placement of 
another person at unreasonable risk of criminal harm at a 
location and in circumstances that are unsafe. In either sit-
uation, there is a common requirement: a trier of fact must 
be able to find from concrete facts that a reasonable person 
in the position of the defendant reasonably would have fore-
seen that the person or location and circumstances posed a 
risk of criminal harm to persons such as the plaintiff. See 
generally Towe, 357 Or at 86; Oregon Steel Mills, 336 Or at 
340; Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17. Facts pertaining to the similar-
ity, frequency, and recency of prior criminal acts, committed 
under the same or similar circumstances, or at or near the 
same location, and involving the same or similar types of 
victims, as well as the place and character of the location 
of the current criminal act, are all relevant to the determi-
nation. See Chapman 358 Or at 220-22; see also Buchler, 
316 Or at 511-12; compare Uihlein, 282 Or at 640-41 (store 
not liable for shopper assaulted in supermarket when little 
evidence of unsafe location), with Brown v. J.C. Penney Co., 
297 Or 695, 710, 688 P2d 811 (1984) (store liable for shopper 
attacked in parking lot where there was ample evidence of 
criminal activity in area). Defendants have not persuaded 
us that those principles require further refinement or that 
the circumstances of this case present a compelling reason 
to do so.
III.  APPLICATION
	
As discussed, defendants repeatedly recount the 
details of this particular shooting, emphasizing the mental 
illness of the shooter, his grudge against teens, and char-
acterizing the attack as a “random spree,” and the shooting 
as “indiscriminate.” Defendants then fault plaintiff’s allega-
tions of foreseeability because they involve different facts. 
To the extent that their challenge focuses on the precise 
82	
Piazza v. Kellim
sequence of events that occurred in this case, defendants 
invite a taxing level of comparison that this court consis-
tently has rejected. As noted, contrary to defendant’s focus, 
foreseeability has reference to the “generalized risk of the 
types of incidents and injuries that occurred[,] rather than 
the predictability of the actual sequence of events.” Fazzolari, 
303 Or at 13 (discussing Stewart). Moreover, plaintiff’s alle-
gations support an inference that the attack in this case was 
not random in the sense of being indiscriminate or lacking a 
plan or purpose. The complaint alleged that the shooter spe-
cifically targeted the Zone because it was a teenage night-
club that attracted young people like Delgado. Although the 
shooter could have chosen other locations to carry out his 
plan, that fact does not make the shooting any less foresee-
able to defendants.
	
We agree with defendants that, among the numer-
ous facts alleged in plaintiff’s complaint, some, viewed in 
isolation, would be too general to sustain her threshold 
pleading burden with respect to foreseeability. For example, 
the allegations that violent crimes have occurred in down-
town Portland over a period of several decades, and in some 
instances, many blocks away from the Zone, and a recita-
tion of general crime statistics for “these neighborhoods,” 
alone add little to the analysis.13 Defendants are right to 
observe that such generalized allegations—substantially 
separated in time and distance from the pertinent events 
	
13  For example, plaintiff listed the crime statistics of “these neighborhoods” 
in her opening brief before the Court of Appeals:
“From September 2006 through December 2006—1 homicide, 282 assaults, 3 
rapes, 67 robberies, 15 sex crimes and 2 kidnappings;
“From January 2007 through December 2007—3 homicides, 16 rapes, 716 
assaults, 187 robberies, 34 sex crimes and 7 kidnappings;
“From January 2008 through December 2008—13 rapes, 709 assaults, 145 
robberies, 45 sex crimes, and 5 kidnappings;
“From January 4, 2009 through January 18, 2009 (the two weeks preceding 
the incident at issue here)—31 assaults, 7 robberies and 2 sex crimes.”
	
Plaintiff does not, however, specify exactly what she means by “these neigh-
borhoods,” beyond the fact that she is referring to the Chinatown/Old Town and 
downtown neighborhoods. Plaintiff also fails to provide information regarding 
the proximity of those crimes to the Zone. The “neighborhood” in question spans 
52 square blocks, and the “downtown entertainment district” comprises nine 
blocks.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
83
here—closely resemble the sort of attenuated circumstances 
that this court eschewed in Buchler.
	
However, at the pleading stage of this case, the dis-
positive issue is whether the allegations of foreseeability in 
plaintiff’s complaint can withstand a motion to dismiss. In 
making that determination, we conclude that the proper 
level of generality at which to compare the criminal history 
on which plaintiff relies and the shooting in this case is to 
treat both as falling within the category of violent assaults. 
This court’s previous decisions generally prescribe a rela-
tively broad level of generality in assessing the reasonable 
foreseeability of criminal conduct as a limit on liability. See, 
e.g., Fazzolari, 303 Or at 21 (treating sexual assault and 
other types of assaults at a school as falling in same cate-
gory for purposes of foreseeability). That is especially true 
where, as here, the risk of harm at a particular location is 
at issue. See, e.g., Uihlein, 282 Or at 641 (“[T]here must be 
something to alert the storekeeper to the likelihood of harm 
of some kind from a criminal agency.”). That only makes 
sense. When a business owner is on notice that—in the 
absence of reasonable precautions—assaultive conduct can 
be anticipated where people are waiting in line to enter its 
premises, it rings hollow to suggest that a specific crime pat-
tern triggers the owner’s duty to protect patrons only with 
regard to those specific crimes (such as gang-related homi-
cide) that have occurred. Only if we can say that the types of 
historical crimes are so dissimilar, or so remote in time and 
location from the current crime that no reasonable person 
could determine that the current crime was foreseeable, will 
a court intervene to remove the matter from the jury as a 
matter of law. Fazzolari, 303 Or at 13, 17-18, 21.
	
Here, plaintiff alleged a repeated—if somewhat 
unevenly spaced—history of violent assaults, including gun 
violence, at and in the neighboring vicinity of the Zone, and 
a known risk of such violence in the future. In the years 
preceding the 2009 shooting, the downtown entertainment 
district—a nine block area that included the Zone—had 
been “plagued by recurrent incidents of violence,” which 
were “linked by police to gang activity and to clubs in the 
district exceeding capacity and serving too much alcohol.” 
84	
Piazza v. Kellim
In 2005, a series of shootings in that district left two peo-
ple dead and four injured. “It was known by Portland police 
and club owners alike that there was a high probability that 
more shootings would take place in the downtown entertain-
ment district.” Pertinent to the foreseeability of that risk 
are plaintiff’s allegations asserting, in effect, that the Zone 
defendants knew that teenage nightclubs such as the Zone 
are especially susceptible to incidents of violent assault. 
Plaintiff alleged that the Zone defendants had in the past 
acknowledged the risks of harm posed by that history at the 
Zone and in the downtown entertainment district. Plaintiff 
also alleged that a gunman stood and loaded his gun on 
that sidewalk, a gunman who was attracted to that location 
because he could find young people standing where he found 
and shot Delgado.
	
Those allegations would permit a reasonable trier of 
fact to determine that a reasonable person in the position of 
the Zone defendants reasonably would have foreseen a risk 
of violent assault on the public sidewalk outside the night-
club, where underage patrons were queued up to enter. They 
also are sufficient to permit a reasonable trier of fact to find 
that the harm that befell Delgado was within the class of 
harms at risk.14
	
The foregoing allegations would not, by themselves, 
permit a finding that the risk of harm to Delgado was rea-
sonably foreseeable to the Rotary defendants. However, 
plaintiff further alleged, with respect to those defendants, 
that the prior violent assaults in and around the Zone were 
“publicized in local and/or national media, and [the Rotary 
defendants] knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care, 
should have known, about the dangers of leaving [Delgado] 
at the Zone nightclub on the date and at the time in ques-
tion.” Assuming, as we must at this stage of the proceedings, 
the truth of those allegations, we cannot say that no trier of 
fact reasonably could determine that a reasonable person 
	
14  We deliberately do not assign a particular degree of significance or lack of 
significance in the foreseeability determination to many of the facts alleged in 
plaintiff’s complaint, in terms of tipping the scales in favor of the overall suffi-
ciency of plaintiff’s pleading. By emphasizing the core facts summarized above, 
we simply note what, in our view, fundamentally surmounts the sufficiency 
hurdle.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
85
in the position of the host parents would have foreseen a 
risk of violent assault on the public sidewalk where they 
left Delgado. The question whether plaintiff can adduce evi-
dence sufficient to create a triable issue of fact with respect 
to those allegations, of course, is not presently before us.15
	
Moreover, on the facts alleged, we are unable to say 
that a reasonable trier of fact would have to find that the 
criminal harm that befell Delgado was categorically differ-
ent from the criminal harms of which the Rotary defendants 
had notice, and that no reasonable factfinder could find that 
the harm to Delgado fell within the class of harms of which 
the Rotary defendants are alleged to have been aware. The 
link between defendants’ allegedly negligent conduct and 
the actual harm that befell Delgado was direct: Plaintiff 
alleged that the Rotary defendants knew that there had 
been a significant history of violent assault late at night at 
or near the Zone, they took Delgado to the Zone and left her 
there, and she was the victim of a violent assault. That chain 
of events is not the sort of “concatenation of highly unusual 
circumstances” that compels the conclusion that Delgado’s 
death was not reasonably foreseeable as a matter of law. See 
Stewart, 255 Or at 609.
IV.  CONCLUSION
	
It bears repeating that, as framed by defendants’ 
motions, the issue before us is not whether plaintiffs’ alle-
gations were sufficient, if proved, to show that defendants’ 
conduct was unreasonable in light of a reasonably foresee-
able risk of harm to Delgado. Thus, we are not concerned—
for example—with whether any precautions that defen-
dants took or failed to take were reasonable in relation to 
	
15  The Court of Appeals correctly understood that:
“Plaintiff’s complaint does not rest on allegations that crime is generally 
foreseeable, or on a conclusory allegation that [t]he Zone is located in a high-
crime area. Rather, plaintiff alleged specific facts that, if proved at trial, 
would establish that [t]he Zone nightclub had experienced violent crime, 
including homicidal violence. Assuming, as we must at this stage of the pro-
ceedings, the truth of those allegations, and that the host parents were aware 
of those facts and nevertheless left Delgado there, a reasonable juror could 
conclude that the host parents’ conduct exposed her to a foreseeable risk of 
violent assault.”
Piazza, 271 Or App at 514.
86	
Piazza v. Kellim
the nature or degree of foreseeable risk of harm to persons 
in Delgado’s circumstances. Instead, our exclusive focus is 
on reasonable foreseeability as a legal limit on the scope of 
defendants’ liability.
	
In Fazzolari, this court said:
“Another person’s crime was once thought to lie beyond a 
defendant’s responsibility on grounds of ‘proximate cause,’ 
Aune v. Oregon Trunk Railway, 151 Or 622, 630-31, 51 P2d 
663 (1935), but more recent decisions have dealt with the 
behavior of others, lawful or otherwise, as part of the gen-
eral analysis of foreseeable risks.”
303 Or at 20. The court’s separation of foreseeability from 
causation arose from a concern that proximate cause not be 
invoked to improperly cut off claims by substituting a judi-
cial veto for what ordinarily is a jury determination. As this 
court previously had stated:
“[W]e cannot lose sight of the fact that we are simply mak-
ing an allocation of the appropriate functions of the court 
and jury. The sole function of a rule of limitation in these 
cases is to tell the court that it must not let the case go to 
the jury. The jury should be given wide latitude in setting 
these limits of liability, whether it be done under a formula 
of negligence or causation.”
Dewey v. A.F. Klaveness & Co., 233 Or 515, 535, 379 P2d 560 
(1963) (internal quotation marks and citation omitted).
	
In this case, plaintiff’s allegations accomplished—at 
the pleading stage—what the evidentiary proffers in cases 
such as Buchler and Chapman did not. Plaintiff alleged 
concrete facts showing a history of violent assault at and 
in the vicinity of the Zone nightclub and related facts that, 
if proved, would support a determination that reasonable 
persons in defendants’ positions would have foreseen a risk 
of violent assault against patrons lined up on the sidewalk 
outside the nightclub. Cf. Buchler, 316 Or at 511 (evidence 
of generic fact that criminals commit crimes insufficient to 
establish foreseeability).
	
Moreover, the type of harm that befell Delgado gen-
erally corresponded to the risk of violent assault to patrons 
of the Zone in Delgado’s position that was reasonably 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
87
foreseeable to defendants. Cf. Chapman, 358 Or at 219-22 
(evidence involving violence by or among visibly intoxicated 
patrons on premises at other bars did not support inference 
that it was reasonably foreseeable that defendant tavern’s 
well-behaved but visibly intoxicated patron would leave tav-
ern premises and unintentionally shoot victims at differ-
ent location). As our prior decisions teach, it is the general 
nature of the harm at risk, not the precise nature of the 
harm suffered by a particular victim, that controls the anal-
ysis.16 Plaintiff’s allegations were sufficient to withstand 
defendants’ motion to dismiss.
	
The dissent’s disagreement with our conclusion 
requires some discussion but, in the end, it presents similar 
arguments to those of the dissent in the Court of Appeals.
	
The dissent’s most insistent disagreement with our 
ultimate conclusion is grounded in our characterization of 
the risk of harm in this case as violent assault. The dissent 
would describe the relevant risk more narrowly as “gang-, 
drug-, and alcohol-related violence.” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, 
C. J., dissenting). According to the dissent, the relevant risk 
in this case is defined in plaintiff’s complaint “by the type of 
criminal,” not “the type of crime.” Id. at __. But, such nar-
row conceptions of the relevant risk are not supported by 
our previous decisions, including those on which the dissent 
relies.
	
It is true that, in determining the appropriate level 
of generality with which to characterize the risk of harm, 
we “[d]raw[ 
] on the plaintiff’s theory of liability” and “view[ 
] 
the defendant’s conduct through the lens of the particular 
factual circumstances of the case.” Chapman, 358 Or at 208. 
However, as we also reiterated in Chapman, in the context 
of the pertinent factual setting, we “describe[e] the type 
of harm at risk more generally, rather than predicting an 
actual sequence of events.” Id. at 208-09. The problem with 
the plaintiff’s evidentiary proffer on summary judgment in 
	
16  Again, that is not to say that differences between past criminal acts com-
mitted at or near the Zone and the shooting in this case would not be relevant 
to the issue of foreseeability as it relates to whether defendants’ conduct was 
unreasonable in light of the risk of harm to patrons such as Delgado. That, as 
previously noted, is a different matter.
88	
Piazza v. Kellim
Chapman was that it relied on “common knowledge” that 
intoxicated tavern patrons engage in violence, an assertion 
for which there was no factual support in the record and 
which did not square up with the plaintiff’s pleaded theory 
that the patron in that case unintentionally shot the plain-
tiffs. Id. at 220-21. In short, there was a failure of proof that 
might have been remedied by the presentation of concrete 
evidence that applied to the circumstances of the case. Id. 
at 221. Although the dissent acknowledges, as it must, that 
in assessing foreseeability, “we focus on generalized risks of 
harm,” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting), it never fully 
comes to grips with that standard in appraising the alle-
gations of plaintiff’s pleading: A “generalized” risk of harm 
inherently connotes an assessment at a relatively broad 
level of generality.
	
The dissent also disagrees with our characteriza-
tion of the relevant risk of harm at issue in Fazzolari. As the 
dissent sees it, Fazzolari’s discussion of the foreseeability of 
different kinds of assaults, in particular, its statement that 
“a school’s responsibility for students’ safety against assault 
is not limited to the risk of rape,” 303 Or at 21, must be 
understood as focused on “the reasonableness of the school’s 
precautions,” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting), rather 
than on foreseeabilty as a limit on a defendant’s liability. 
We do not share the dissent’s reading of Fazzolari. When 
the quoted statement from Fazzolari is read in context, it 
is apparent that the court was discussing foreseeability as 
it relates to the risk of harm. Before making that state-
ment, the court discussed the “issue of foreseeability * * 
* 
[and whether] no reasonable factfinder could find the attack 
on [the] plaintiff to have been a foreseeable risk.” 303 Or 
at 21. The court then referred to the “generalized risks of 
the types of incidents and injuries” discussed in Stewart. 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 21. Applying that concept to the facts of 
the case, the court noted the evidence of the sexual assault 
on school grounds 15 days before the attack on plaintiff and 
that the plaintiff had attempted to introduce evidence of 
various other kinds of attacks. Id. The court then stated:
“Obviously a school’s responsibility for students’ safety 
against assault is not limited to the risk of rape, and evi-
dence of foreseeability will differ depending on whether the 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
89
risk of injury is claimed to be specific to a school, or schools 
generally, or a neighborhood, or a class of potential victims 
such as women or particular ethnic groups.”
Id. Only after discussing the foreseeability of the risk of harm 
did the court refer, as an additional point, to foreseeability 
as a measure of the defendant’s unreasonable conduct:
“Also, the character and probability of the risk that is 
claimed to be foreseeable bears on the steps administrators 
reasonably should take to avert it.”
Id. at 21-22. In any event, that reference does nothing to dimin-
ish the fact that, as the court held, the proper level of gen-
erality with which to view the risk of harm under the plain-
tiff’s theory of liability in Fazzolari was the risk of assault in 
general, not a particular type of assault. Id.
	
And, that was no aberration. As early as Danner v. 
Arnsberg et al, 227 Or 420, 362 P2d 758 (1961), this court 
held that, if a plaintiff’s injury was “of the same general 
character” as an injury that could be anticipated, the injury 
was not necessarily unforeseeable. Id. at 427-28. In Stewart, 
we noted that “liability is confined to harms * 
* 
* that are of 
the general kind to be anticipated from the [allegedly tor-
tious] conduct.” 255 Or at 608-09 (quoting Harper & James, 
The Law of Torts Introduction xl (1956) (emphasis and 
brackets added)). Fazzolari adopted the same standard. 303 
Or at 21. In short, the question is whether, in the factual set-
ting of the case, the harm suffered by the plaintiff is of the 
same general kind to be anticipated from the defendants’ 
allegedly negligent conduct. Nothing that we have said since 
Fazzolari has altered that fundamental construct.
	
As that principle applies here, the fact that the his-
tory of violent assaults at and in the neighborhood surround-
ing the Zone included gang, alcohol, and drug-related conduct, 
and shootings, as well as other forms of physical violence, is 
not dispositive of the foreseeability inquiry.17 The facts that 
	
17  We note that, rather than give plaintiff’s pleading the benefit of all reason-
able inferences in its foreseeability analysis, the dissent has failed to give appro-
priate weight to several relevant historical facts alleged in plaintiff’s pleading, 
including the 2005 series of shootings in the Downtown Entertainment District, 
the “history of fights and assaults in the line outside” the Zone, and the more 
general allegation that “shooting, stabbings, felonious assaults, drug violations, 
90	
Piazza v. Kellim
plaintiff alleged, if proved, would permit a determination 
that the location at which Delgado was attacked—because 
it attracted party-going young people at night—attracted 
violent assault in various forms. As plaintiff alleged, the 
shooter was drawn to that location precisely because he 
expected to find partying teens at that location and time. To 
call the attack random, senseless, or mass does not advance 
the analysis very far. The shooting in this case was random 
in the sense that the shooter could have picked other loca-
tions to find teen victims, but it was no more random than 
attacks in the area that were the product of gang-related 
violence, to the extent that gang violence involves members 
of one gang targeting another gang at a location where that 
gang might be found.18 Reasonable minds can and do differ 
as to whether, in light of the history of violent assaults at 
the Zone and in the surrounding neighborhood, the attack 
on Delgado was reasonably foreseeable.19
	
In a different argument, the dissent asserts that, 
in concluding that plaintiff has sufficiently stated a claim 
with respect to foreseeability, we have mistakenly failed 
and/or murders are commonplace” in underage nightclubs. See 360 Or at __ 
(Balmer, C. J., dissenting). Moreover, contrary to the dissent’s apparent assump-
tion, Id. at __, and, giving, as we must, plaintiff’s pleading the requisite benefit of 
all reasonable inferences, there is no indication that all those incidents involved 
drug, alcohol, and/or gang-related violence, nor is there an indication that the 
2002 shooting at the crowd outside the predecessor of the Zone was related to 
gangs, drugs, or alcohol.
	
18  Here, the shooting was intentional—just like a gang- or drug-related 
shooting would be—and it occurred in a high crime area with a history and rep-
utation for violence. The risk of violent assault that those circumstances created 
included an intentional shooting that may leave incidental, unintended victims. 
Gang members and drug dealers do not always aim with precision. In that sense, 
the type of shooting in this case is not too different from the “mass murder” sce-
nario that the dissent implies.
	
19  The Court of Appeals put the matter well when it said:
“Whether the circumstances of a particular assault—such as the shoot-
er’s motive or mental state, the intended victim, or the weapon used—are 
‘details,’ or instead serve to make the crime qualitatively different from other 
foreseeable harms, will vary from case to case. Based on the facts alleged 
in plaintiff’s complaint, a reasonable juror could conclude that this type of 
assault—a gunman firing at patrons waiting in line to enter [t]he Zone—fell 
within the category of risks that the Zone defendants should have antici-
pated, regardless of the shooter’s particular motive, mental state, intended 
targets, or weapon used.”
Piazza, 271 Or App at 511-12.
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
91
to distinguish between “the manner of harm” and the “end 
result.” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting). According 
to the dissent, our characterization of the harm risked as 
“violent assault,” is an “end result,” upon which we focus 
to a fault, while “ignoring the manner in which the harm 
occurred.” Id. at __. In making that argument, the dissent 
relies on several decisions of this court, but that reliance is 
misplaced.20
	
Hefty v. Comprehensive Care Corporation, 307 Or 
247, 766 P2d 1026 (1988), illustrates the type of “extreme 
case” that is beyond the general rule of foreseeable harm. 
In that case, K, a teenager, was voluntary admitted to the 
defendant’s Adolescent Care Unit for the treatment of alco-
holism. Id. at 250. Six days after she was admitted, she 
	
20  The dissent also relies on cases from other jurisdictions. As the dissent 
notes, 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting), the Seventh Circuit in Shadday 
v. Omni Hotels Management Corp., 477 F3d 511, 517 (7th Cir 2007), limited the 
defendant’s liability for criminal conduct in that case under District of Columbia 
law to circumstances “when it has some reason to think such crime likely.” 
Similarly, in Commonwealth v. Peterson, 286 Va 349, 749 SE2d 307 (2013), relied 
on by the dissent, 360 Or at __ n 2 (Balmer, C. J., dissenting), the court followed 
the Virginia rule providing, unlike Oregon law, that
“where the special relationship was that of business owner/invitee or landlord/ 
tenant, we have imposed a duty to warn of third party criminal acts only 
where there was an imminent probability of injury from a third party crim-
inal act.”
Peterson, 286 Va at 357, 749 SE2d at 312 (internal quotation marks and citation 
omitted; emphasis added). Because this court has never required that an injury 
be probable, let alone imminently probable, in order to satisfy the foreseeability 
requirement, those authorities are simply inapplicable here. Moreover, although 
it is unnecessary to pursue the matter in detail, as two commentators have noted, 
there is much room to question the reasoning of Shadday, in particular:
“The idea that a hotel owes no duty to its guests to take steps to protect them 
from other guests is quite untenable. Imagine that a hotel installed low-
grade electronic locks that enabled guests easily to use their own room keys 
to open other guest’s rooms. If a guest were to take advantage of this inad-
equate security system to break into the room of another guest and attack 
the other, the victim’s claim that the hotel failed in a basic responsibility to 
provide security would be quite compelling. This would be a failure to provide 
the security that a guest reasonably expects from a hotel and that a hotel 
implicitly promises to its guests. The duty Shadday was owed was a duty 
to take ordinary care against her being attacked on the premises. Parsing 
that risk into the risk of attack by intruders versus guests is arbitrary and 
unmotivated.”
John C. P. Goldberg & Benjamin C. Zipursky, Civil Recourse Defended: A Reply 
to Posner Calabresi, Rustad, Chamallas, and Robinette, 88 Ind LJ 569, 588-89 
(2013).
92	
Piazza v. Kellim
left the facility against the medical advice of the unit. Id. 
Neither K nor the hospital notified her parents that she had 
left. Id. While riding as a passenger on a friend’s motorcy-
cle, she sustained severe head injuries in an accident with 
an automobile. Id. at 251. Neither drugs nor alcohol was a 
factor in the collision. Id.
	
Importantly, the court said:
“The risk to be foreseen was not that [K] would ride on the 
back of a motorcycle and be injured in a collision with an 
automobile. * 
* 
* The risk to be foreseen was more general—
it encompassed those generalized incidents and injuries 
created by discharging [K], an impaired minor addicted to 
alcohol, without notice to parents or police, without the per-
mission of her doctor, without providing alternative care, 
and with the knowledge that [K] could not care for herself.”
Id. at 252 (citation omitted).
	
As pertinent here, Hefty stands for the proposi-
tion that the risk of harm to be foreseen must be described 
more generally than the dissent would describe it. Instead 
of describing the risk of harm to be foreseen narrowly as 
the risk that the daughter “would ride on of a motorcycle 
and be injured in a collision with an automobile,” the court 
carefully tied the risk to be foreseen to the more general 
risk encompassed by the “generalized incidents and inju-
ries created by” the defendant’s unreasonable conduct. Id. 
Ultimately, the court held that, because neither alcohol nor 
drugs had been involved in the accident—that is, because 
the connection between the defendant’s negligent conduct 
and the harm that the plaintiff suffered was too attenu-
ated—no reasonable trier of fact could find that K’s injuries 
fell within the scope of the foreseeable risk posed by the dis-
charge. Id. at 252-53.
	
The dissent also relies on Oregon Steel Mills. In 
that case, there was no causal relationship between the 
defendant’s conduct (negligently preparing an accounting 
report) and the “force” that inflicted harm on the plaintiffs 
(a declining stock market); the stock market did not take 
notice of the defendant’s negligence and use the opportunity 
to decline. Oregon Steel Mills, 336 Or at 345. The two events 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
93
occurred in a temporal relationship to each other that were 
completely coincidental.
	
This court in Oregon Steel Mills took pains to 
describe the problem for the plaintiff as lack of foreseeabil-
ity, not causation in fact. See id. at 344. However, the court 
focused on the lack of a causal nexus between the defen-
dants’ conduct and the market forces that led to the price 
decline that harmed the plaintiff, when it ultimately con-
cluded that “the intervening action of market forces on the 
price of plaintiff’s stock was the ‘harm-producing force,’ and 
defendant’s actions did not ‘cause’ the decline in the stock 
price so as to support liability for that decline.” Id. at 345 
(emphasis added). That is another way of saying, as in 
Buchler, that the defendant’s conduct merely facilitated the 
harm ultimately suffered by the plaintiff. See Buchler, 316 
Or at 511-12 (“[M]ere ‘facilitation’ of an unintended adverse 
result, where intervening intentional criminality of another 
person is the harm-producing force, does not cause the harm 
so as to support liability for it.”).
	
But, here, the relationship between defendants’ 
conduct and the harm inflicted on Delgado is qualitatively 
different from the relationships in Hefty and Oregon Steel 
Mills that this court deemed to be too attenuated.21 Here, in 
contrast to the circumstances in those cases, as alleged in 
plaintiff’s complaint, the assailant’s access to Delgado and 
the other teens outside the Zone was directly connected to 
the Zone defendants’ asserted negligence in failing to provide 
adequate security against violent assault for patrons lined 
up on the sidewalk. To the extent that the dissent’s “manner 
of harm/end result” argument more narrowly describes the 
pertinent risks of harm as “gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related 
violence,” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting), it is bound 
up in the dissent’s conception of the appropriate level of gen-
erality with which to describe the presenting risk of harm, a 
conception that we do not share.
	
Finally, the dissent argues that we have not ade-
quately explained our conclusion that plaintiff’s complaint 
	
21  As we later explained, Oregon Steel Mills “turned on the specific facts 
before the court.” Bailey, 343 Or at 289-90.
94	
Piazza v. Kellim
sufficiently alleged foreseeability. Although the dissent may 
not be satisfied, the analysis cannot be reduced to the appli-
cation of Euclidean-like postulates. That is because, as pre-
viously explained, foreseeability in the pertinent sense ulti-
mately is a blended factual and normative inquiry. Because 
reasonable foreseeability invokes a community’s application 
of its own values, whether a particular outcome of conduct 
is foreseeable is most appropriately decided by the commu-
nity’s closest proxy in our civil justice system, that is, by a 
jury. Exceptions exist only for harm resulting from “the con-
catenation of highly unusual circumstances.” Stewart, 255 
Or at 609. Fazzolari reiterated that standard: “[T]he issue 
ordinarily can be left to the jury,” except for conduct “at the 
outer margins.” 303 Or at 12.22 In an earlier case, Justice 
O’Connell put it this way:
“In any case where there might be reasonable difference of 
opinion as to the foreseeability of a particular risk, the rea-
sonableness of the defendant’s conduct with respect to it, 
or the normal character of an intervening cause, the ques-
tion is for the jury, subject of course to suitable instructions 
from the court as to the legal conclusion to be drawn as the 
issue is determined either way.”
Dewey, 233 Or at 536 (O’Connell, J., concurring) (quoting 
William L. Prosser, Handbook of the Law of Torts 282 (2d 
ed 1955)).
	
Precisely because it is driven by community values, 
judges have no upper hand over juries in the inquiry, except 
to act as gatekeepers at the outer margins.23 With that 
	
22  The dissent misunderstands our reasoning in asserting that, “[i]n effect, 
the majority concludes that an assailant’s methods and motivations are irrel-
evant to the foreseeability analysis.” 360 Or at __ (Balmer, C. J., dissenting). 
To the contrary, those factors are relevant to the analysis, but we do not share 
the dissent’s view that they are so conclusive in this case as to preclude a jury 
determination that the harm that befell Delgado was reasonably foreseeable to 
defendants.
	
23  In a thoughtful discussion of the underpinnings of the allocation of respon-
sibility between judge and jury in foreseeability determinations, one commenta-
tor has said:
“The genius of the jury is that it brings to each case multiple perspectives, 
both shared and diverse experiences, and (with the exception of the occa-
sional attorney-juror) a legal tabula rasa. To put it simply—especially 
when considering a question like foreseeability that is part-analysis, 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
95
limited role in view, what we have here is not a suburban 
mall in daylight hours or some other workaday public place 
where people ordinarily go about their routines with only a 
remote consciousness of the risk of a violent attack. Instead, 
as alleged in plaintiff’s complaint, the scene of this shooting 
was an inadequately secured sidewalk queue where teen- 
agers were waiting to enter a nightclub, late in the evening, 
in a high-crime urban neighborhood that, based on publi-
cized past experience, posed a risk of violent harm to persons 
present. The harm that befell Delgado, although thankfully 
uncommon, was within the range of risks of harms that a 
reasonable factfinder could find was reasonably foreseeable 
in the circumstances alleged in plaintiff’s complaint.
	
The decision of the Court of Appeals is affirmed. 
The judgment of the circuit court is reversed, and the case 
is remanded to the circuit court for further proceedings.
	
BALMER, C. J.
	
A reader of the majority opinion would be forgiven 
for thinking that the death of plaintiff’s decedent was the 
tragic result of the kind of gang-, drug-, or alcohol-related 
violence that plaintiff alleges to be common in the neighbor-
hood around the Zone nightclub. But that is not what hap-
pened here, and plaintiff does not allege otherwise. Instead, 
decedent was shot during an attempted mass murder by a 
violent schizophrenic assailant, Ayala, who opened fire sim-
ply because he was intent on killing teenagers. Plaintiff does 
not allege that Ayala was a gang member, a drug dealer, or 
a club-goer or had any other foreseeable connection to the 
Zone or the Zone’s neighborhood.
	
The majority opinion, nevertheless, concludes that 
plaintiff’s allegations of gang-, drug-, or alcohol-related vio-
lence could establish that the shooting incident in this case 
was foreseeable because both the alleged neighborhood vio-
lence and the shooting at issue here are types of “violent 
part-community experience, and part-gestalt—perhaps twelve heads are 
better than one.”
W. Jonathan Cardi, Purging Foreseeability: The New Vision of Duty and Judicial 
Power in the Proposed Restatement (Third) of Torts, 58 Vand L Rev 739, 800 
(2005) (footnote omitted).
96	
Piazza v. Kellim
assaults.” 360 Or at ___. But the majority fails to explain 
why that similarity matters. Contrary to the majority’s 
analysis, it does not follow as a matter of law or as a matter 
of logic that, simply because some types of violent assault 
are foreseeable, therefore all types of violent assault are 
foreseeable. I would limit the types of foreseeable risks in 
this case to those that plaintiff has alleged to be present at 
the time and place of the shooting—namely, gang-, drug-, 
and alcohol-related violence, which might include some 
shooting incidents but would exclude the shooting incident 
in this case. Defining the foreseeable risks any more broadly 
than that, as the majority does, goes beyond the risks that 
the complaint alleges. For those reasons, I dissent.
	
The principal issue on review is whether plaintiff 
has alleged facts that would allow a reasonable jury to con-
clude that the shooting incident underlying this negligence 
case was a type of foreseeable risk created by defendants’ 
conduct. According to plaintiff, the Zone nightclub had a 
history of violence, because a shooting happened there in 
2002—seven years before the shooting incident here—and 
because underage nightclubs are inherently dangerous, due 
to the high proportion of young male patrons, high noise lev-
els, crowding, and “competitive situations.” Further, plaintiff 
alleges that “assaults” occur regularly in the area around 
the Zone because of gangs, drug dealing, and over-consump-
tion of alcohol. Those facts, plaintiff alleges, were known, or 
should have been known, to defendants. As a result, plain-
tiff contends that a risk of violent assault was foreseeable. 
Plaintiff concludes, therefore, that the Rotary defendants 
were negligent for leaving the group of teenagers, including 
decedent, at the Zone, and that the Zone defendants were 
negligent for asking patrons to form a line outside the club 
and failing to provide more and better security.
	
Plaintiff’s allegations are unquestionably thin and 
bear little relationship to the unprovoked shooting in this 
case. That is particularly true with regard to the Rotary 
defendants. Plaintiff alleges only that the Rotary defen-
dants “knew, or in the exercise of reasonable care, should 
have known, about the dangers of leaving plaintiff’s dece-
dent in the Zone nightclub on the date and time in ques-
tion.” Although “the fact that the defendant was aware of a 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
97
particular risk” is usually a factual allegation rather than 
a legal conclusion, Moore v. Willis, 307 Or 254, 259, 767 P2d 
62 (1988), it is not clear to me that plaintiff’s allegation of 
“danger” is an allegation of a particular risk. And although 
plaintiff alleges that “instances of violence that occurred 
nationally at underage nightclubs and locally in the area 
around the Zone nightclub were all publicized in local and/
or national media,” plaintiff does not allege that the Rotary 
defendants were aware of those “local and/or national” news 
reports, nor any reason why the Rotary defendants—or their 
alleged agents, decedent’s host family in White Salmon, 
Washington—should have been aware of those reports. 
Reports of violence are commonplace. Local and national 
media are so saturated with crime stories that an ordinary 
person cannot be expected to take note of all violent acts 
wherever they might travel and account for them in assess-
ing the risks of engaging in daily life. Foresight of that kind 
would demand “a paranoid view of the universe,” and that 
is not what the legal standard of foreseeability requires. 
Fazzolari v. Portland School Dist. No. 1J, 303 Or 1, 21, 734 
P2d 1326 (1987).
	
Nevertheless, I do not believe that that issue needs 
to be resolved because, even assuming that the Rotary 
defendants had the same knowledge as the Zone defendants, 
those allegations are insufficient to establish that the shoot-
ing incident underlying this case was foreseeable. We gener-
ally make that determination by comparing the harm that 
a plaintiff suffered to the general types of risks foreseeably 
created by a defendant’s conduct. Id. at 17 (describing the 
standards of foreseeability). The trial court ruled that plain-
tiff’s allegations, even if true, could not establish that the 
shooting incident was foreseeable and therefore dismissed 
plaintiff’s second amended complaint under ORCP 21 A(8) 
for failing to state ultimate facts supporting her negligence 
claim against both the Zone defendants and the Rotary 
defendants.
	
When reviewing a trial court’s ruling dismissing a 
plaintiff’s complaint under ORCP 21 A(8), we assume, like 
the trial court, that the facts alleged in the complaint are 
true, and we draw all reasonable inferences in the plaintiff’s 
favor. Bailey v. Lewis Farm, Inc., 343 Or 276, 278, 171 P3d 
98	
Piazza v. Kellim
336 (2007). The majority agrees that, when assessing the 
sufficiency of a plaintiff’s allegations to state a claim, it is 
the court’s role to “ 
‘determine whether upon the facts alleged 
* 
* 
* no reasonable factfinder could decide one or more ele-
ments of liability.’ 
” Chapman v. Mayfield, 358 Or 196, 205, 
361 P3d 566 (2015) (quoting Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17).
	
Foreseeability is central to establishing the elements 
of a negligence claim. A defendant may be subject to liability 
for negligence only if the defendant’s conduct “unreasonably 
created a foreseeable risk * 
* 
* of the kind of harm that befell 
the plaintiff.” Fazzolari, 303 Or at 17. Therefore, a plain-
tiff fails to state a negligence claim if the plaintiff fails to 
allege facts that would allow a reasonable jury to find that 
the plaintiff was harmed by a foreseeable risk created by 
the defendant’s unreasonable conduct. Solberg v. Johnson, 
306 Or 484, 490-91, 760 P2d 867 (1988) (stating that the 
elements of a negligence claim include “that defendant’s con-
duct caused a foreseeable risk of harm, * 
* 
* that defendant’s 
conduct was unreasonable in light of the risk, [and] * 
* 
* that 
plaintiff was within the class of persons and plaintiff’s injury 
was within the general type of potential incidents and inju-
ries that made defendant’s conduct negligent”).
	
As a result, defining the scope of foreseeable risks 
has important implications for tort law generally and par-
ticularly when liability will be imposed for negligent con-
duct. A risk is foreseeable if a reasonable person would 
have “reasonably expected the injury to occur.” Stewart v. 
Jefferson Plywood Co., 255 Or 603, 609, 469 P2d 783 (1970). 
If the scope of foreseeable risks is described more broadly, 
then that necessarily means that an actor should expect his 
or her conduct to lead to more or greater harms. A more 
broadly defined risk makes it easier to establish both that a 
defendant’s conduct is unreasonable (because the probability 
and severity of foreseeable harms are factors in determin-
ing reasonableness) and that a plaintiff’s harm falls within 
the risks created by the defendant’s unreasonable conduct 
(because the risk encompasses more harms). The opposite is 
true when the foreseeable risks are defined narrowly.
	
Although foreseeability is a component of both the 
reasonableness determination and the harm-within-the-risk 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
99
determination, defendants do not challenge the sufficiency 
of plaintiff’s allegations to establish that defendants’ con-
duct was unreasonable. Thus, for the sake of reviewing the 
trial court’s dismissal order, we assume that the Rotary 
defendants should not have taken the teenagers to the Zone. 
And we assume that the Zone defendants should not have 
required patrons to form a line and should have provided 
more and better security.
	
Instead of challenging the reasonable-conduct ele-
ment of plaintiff’s negligence claims, defendants challenge 
plaintiff’s pleading of the element requiring that decedent’s 
harm was within the foreseeable risks created or increased 
by defendants’ conduct. See, e.g., Chapman, 358 Or at 206 
(considering “whether plaintiffs’ injuries were within the 
type of potential harms that made defendant’s conduct 
unreasonable”; affirming summary judgment for defen-
dant); Bailey, 343 Or at 281 (reversing dismissal where 
“[t]he type of harm that plaintiff suffered fell squarely 
within the scope of the risk that defendant’s negligence cre-
ated”).1 That element identifies the legal limit of liability for 
negligently caused harms—that is, the point at which we 
will not hold a defendant liable for harms, even if the defen-
dant acted unreasonably and even if the defendant’s conduct 
was a but-for (or substantial-factor) cause of the injury. See, 
e.g., Stewart, 255 Or at 607 (noting defendant’s negligence 
and causation but attempting to “draw[ 
] the line at which 
the defendant’s liability ends”).
	
As it relates to that element, overly broad and overly 
narrow categories of risk distort the limits of liability:
“It has been observed that ‘if we use a very generalized 
description of the type of harm that was foreseeable and of 
the type of harm that occurred, an answer that the result 
was within the risk is inevitable.’ And on the other hand, 
‘(i)f we use a detailed, mechanism-of-harm description of 
the result and the risks, the answer will be negative.’ 
”
	
1  See Restatement (Third) of Torts: Phys. & Emot. Harm § 29 (2010) (“An actor 
is not liable for harm different from the harms whose risks made the actor’s con-
duct tortious.”); id. § 30 (“An actor is not liable for harm when the tortious aspect 
of the actor’s conduct was of a type that does not generally increase the risk of 
that harm.”).
100	
Piazza v. Kellim
Id. at 610 (quoting Robert E. Keeton, Legal Cause in the Law 
of Torts, 51 (1963)) (footnotes omitted); see also Chapman, 
358 Or at 208 (same) (citing Stewart, 255 Or at 610). Risks 
should not be defined so narrowly as to require the defendant 
to foresee the precise sequence of events, as they unfolded, 
that lead to the particular plaintiff’s particular injury. See 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 21 (so stating). Instead, we focus on 
generalized risks of harm. Id. at 13 (citing Stewart, 255 Or 
at 610-11). My disagreement with the majority, therefore, is 
not whether courts should use “generalized” descriptions of 
risk; our cases correctly require us to do so. My disagree-
ment, rather, is over how broadly to define the generalized 
risks that we use in this case. As Stewart itself recognized, 
a generalized risk of harm may be defined in terms that 
are too general. Stewart, 255 Or at 610. Because liability 
is intended to track community standards for blameworthi-
ness, risks must be characterized with sufficient particu-
larity to distinguish between conduct that is blameworthy 
and conduct that is not. Id. at 608-09 (so stating). Risks that 
are defined too broadly—where a finding of foreseeability is 
“ 
‘inevitable,’ 
” id. at 610 (quotation omitted)—cannot serve 
as a meaningful limit on the scope of liability. See Fazzolari, 
303 Or at 21 (so stating).
	
There is no single standard for determining the 
appropriate level of generality for defining risks. Last 
year, in Chapman, this court emphasized the importance 
of appropriately identifying how generally to define risks. 
358 Or at 208. To do so, “this court’s practice in cases that 
address foreseeability as a limit on liability” has been to 
“[d]raw[ 
] on the plaintiff’s theory of liability” and to “view[ 
] 
the defendant’s conduct through the lens of the particular 
factual circumstances of the case—with emphasis on what 
the defendant knew or should have known about the risk of 
harm.” Id.
	
For example, in Stewart, the court addressed the 
appropriate level of generality for defining the foreseeable 
risks created by negligent welding operations. In that case, 
there was no question that the defendant’s unreasonable con-
duct started a fire that spread to a neighboring warehouse. 
Stewart, 255 Or at 605. While attempting to prevent further 
fire damage on the roof of that warehouse, the plaintiff fell 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
101
through a covered skylight, hit the floor, and suffered vari-
ous injuries. Id. Thus, there was also no question that defen-
dant’s conduct was a factual cause of the plaintiff’s injury. 
But the court noted that establishing that the defendant’s 
unreasonable conduct caused the plaintiff’s injury is not suf-
ficient to establish liability, because a defendant is not liable 
for all injuries caused by his or her unreasonable conduct. 
Id. at 606. Instead, a defendant is subject to liability only for 
injuries that can be “anticipated.” Id. at 609.
	
The court concluded that the plaintiff’s injury could 
be anticipated because a reasonable person would know that 
firefighters “might be injured as a result of a variety of possi-
ble circumstances—by being burned, by falling off a ladder, 
by falling off a roof, by falling through a burned portion of 
the roof, or by other similar risks normally associated with 
fighting fires.” Id. at 610. Although falling through a covered 
skylight might not immediately come to mind as a potential 
harm, it was foreseeable because it was within the types of 
risks that a reasonable person would reasonably expect a 
firefighter to encounter. Id.
	
The plaintiff’s theory and supporting evidence were 
related to firefighting, so the risk of harm was defined in 
reference to firefighting. Based on that theory and that evi-
dence, it would have been inappropriate, for example, to 
define the risk as being “falling through covered skylights.” 
That risk would have been too narrow because it would 
have required the plaintiff to establish that defendant had 
specific knowledge that the skylight was covered. That risk 
would have also been too broad because it would encompass 
risks outside the plaintiff’s theory of liability and the evi-
dence offered. Hypothetically, bystanders might have gone 
to the roof of a warehouse upwind from the fire simply to 
watch the activity. If a bystander on that warehouse fell 
through a covered skylight, the defendant’s negligent con-
duct still might have been a factual cause of the resulting 
injuries. But the foreseeability of that injury could not have 
been established through evidence of the risks encountered 
by firefighters.
	
In this case, plaintiff attempts to establish that 
the shooting incident was foreseeable based on defendants’ 
102	
Piazza v. Kellim
knowledge of prior criminal acts at or around the Zone. 
As noted above, we assume that defendants’ conduct was 
unreasonable, and, therefore, we assume that they had 
knowledge of prior criminal acts at or around the Zone that 
would cause them to be aware of some continuing risk of 
further criminal acts. The question is whether the shooting 
incident in this case was among the criminal acts that a rea-
sonable person would foresee based on those prior criminal 
acts allegedly known to defendants.
	
Answering that question requires comparing those 
prior criminal acts to the shooting incident in this case. 
The majority identifies a number of factors relevant to that 
comparison—namely, the degree of similarity, frequency, 
recency, and geographic proximity between the plaintiff’s 
harm and the prior criminal acts alleged by the plaintiff. 
360 Or at ___. And, as the majority notes, similarity may be 
based on the nature of the criminal act itself, or it may be 
based on other considerations, such as the circumstances of 
the offense or the specific types of victims.
	
Thus, a generalized risk does not need to be defined 
so broadly as to capture all of the prior criminal acts that a 
plaintiff has alleged. Instead, the risk is based only on those 
prior criminal acts that indicate a continuing risk of injury 
at the time and place of a defendant’s allegedly negligent 
conduct and a plaintiff’s resulting harm. In other words, 
the foreseeability of a plaintiff’s injury cannot be based on 
prior criminal acts that are too dissimilar, are too remote 
in time or place, or otherwise fail to indicate a continuing 
risk at the relevant time and place.2 Prior criminal acts that 
are dissimilar to the criminal act that caused the plaintiff’s 
injury might have signaled a continuing risk of some other 
type of harm, but not the risk of harm that the plaintiff suf-
fered. And prior criminal acts that are too remote in time 
	
2  In certain circumstances, prior criminal acts may no longer indicate a con-
tinuing risk, even if the prior criminal acts are close in time and place to the 
plaintiff’s injury. In Commonwealth v. Peterson, 286 Va 349, 749 SE2d 307 (2013), 
for example, the Virginia Supreme Court held that knowledge that two university 
students were shot and killed on campus did not establish the foreseeability of a 
mass shooting by the same assailant hours later, which lead to the deaths of 32 
people. At the time the mass shooting began, defendants reasonably believed that 
the earlier shooting was a domestic incident and that “the shooter had fled the 
area and posed no danger to others.” Id. at 359. 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
103
and place might have signaled a continuing risk of harm at 
some other time or some other place, but not at the time and 
place of the plaintiff’s injury. What counts as dissimilar or 
too remote will depend on the plaintiff’s theory of liability 
and factual allegations.
	
For example, in Fazzolari, a female student was 
sexually assaulted on school grounds. 303 Or at 3. In assess-
ing the foreseeability of the sexual assault, the court noted 
that there was evidence of a prior sexual assault on another 
female at the same school only 15 days earlier. Id. at 21. 
Although the court in Fazzolari did not expressly apply the 
factors that the majority now identifies, that single prior 
criminal act established recency, geographic proximity, and 
similarity of the criminal act sufficient to allow the issue 
to go to the jury. In considering evidence of “various other 
kinds of attacks,” the court noted that “evidence of foresee-
ability will differ depending on whether the risk of injury is 
claimed to be specific to a school, or schools generally, or a 
neighborhood, or a class of potential victims such as women 
or particular ethnic groups.” Id.
	
Similarly, we start by assessing decedent’s injury 
in this case and then compare it to the prior criminal acts 
allegedly known by defendants. According to plaintiff, 
the shooting incident in this case occurred when Ayala 
approached a group of teenagers waiting in line at night out-
side the Zone and opened fire with a semiautomatic handgun 
with the intent to kill them. As pleaded, Ayala was a para-
noid schizophrenic who was motivated to commit the shoot-
ing by an irrational and hostile fixation with teenagers.3
	
The prior criminal acts alleged by plaintiff to be 
known by defendants relate to the Zone itself and to the neigh-
borhood around the Zone. As it relates to the Zone, plaintiff 
alleges that underage nightclubs are inherently danger-
ous because many patrons are young males in “competitive 
	
3  Defendants ask this court to take judicial notice of the fact that Ayala shot 
a total of nine people, killing two—decedent and one other victim—and that 
Ayala then fatally shot himself at the scene. It would have been more appropri-
ate for defendants to raise that issue in the first instance with the trial court. 
Regardless, that issue is beyond the scope of this case because, for the reasons 
described in the text, this court should affirm the trial court’s dismissal order 
even if we do not take judicial notice of the facts that defendants offered.
104	
Piazza v. Kellim
situations” and clubs are often noisy and crowded. But prior 
incidents of teenage fights are plainly insufficient to cre-
ate a reasonable expectation of an unprovoked shooting. 
Further, plaintiff relies on a shooting in 2002 that injured 
three people outside the location later occupied by the Zone. 
Although that shooting is a similar criminal act in some 
ways, it happened seven years before the shooting in this 
case—nothing like the 15 days that separated the crimes in 
Fazzolari. Because of that lack of recency, we cannot simply 
assume that the causes of the 2002 shooting persisted and 
continued to pose a risk of another shooting there in 2009. 
And plaintiff alleges no additional facts that could establish 
that the 2002 shooting created a reasonable expectation of a 
shooting seven years later.
	
As it relates to the area around the Zone, plain-
tiff alleges that violent assaults occur regularly because of 
gangs, drug dealing, and over-consumption of alcohol. To 
substantiate that, plaintiff provides crime statistics from an 
expansively drawn area, covering the entire Downtown and 
Old Town/Chinatown neighborhoods. Plaintiff, however, 
makes no allegations addressing the extent to which those 
crimes actually happened near the Zone, affected Zone 
patrons, or otherwise resembled the unprovoked shooting in 
this case. In other words, in an attempt to establish recency 
and frequency, plaintiff has stretched the bounds of similar-
ity and geographic proximity.
	
Nevertheless, the majority insists that a reasonable 
jury would be allowed to conclude that defendants should 
have foreseen a risk of “violent assault.” 360 Or at ___. The 
majority does not further limit its characterization of that 
foreseeable risk, which, therefore, covers all types of violent 
assault. But the expansiveness of that risk proves that it 
is untenably broad. A risk of “violent assault” would cover 
nearly all types of violence, including the shooting incident 
in this case, but also including sexual assaults, armed rob-
beries, bombings, and even acts of terrorism—each of which 
is a type of violence that would not have been foreseeable 
based on plaintiff’s allegations. If plaintiff had pleaded that 
the shooting incident occurred in a war zone, then we might 
expect a reasonable person to anticipate the wide range of 
harms that fall within the category of “violent assaults.” 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
105
But plaintiff’s allegations are far more limited than that. 
Consequently, the foreseeable risk that may be established 
by plaintiff’s allegations requires some limitation.
	
That limitation separates the types of violence 
that could have been reasonably expected from the types 
of violence that could not have been reasonably expected. 
As explained above, many of plaintiff’s allegations are too 
remote to indicate a continuing risk at the time and place 
of the shooting.4 Focusing only on plaintiff’s allegations that 
indicated a continuing risk of injury at the time and place of 
the shooting, plaintiff’s allegations could support, at most, a 
conclusion that defendants should have foreseen some types 
of violent assaults—namely, those types of violent assaults 
that plaintiff alleged to be common in the neighborhood at 
the time of the shooting: gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related 
violence. Plaintiff’s allegations of prior gang-, drug-, and 
alcohol-related crimes indicated a foreseeable risk of harm 
at the time of the shooting because, as alleged by plaintiff, 
gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related activity continued to per-
sist in the area around the Zone at that time.
	
The foreseeable risk in this case is defined by the 
type of criminal—i.e., whether the criminals whose activi-
ties posed the allegedly foreseeable risks of harm are con-
nected to gang-, drug-, or alcohol-related activities—rather 
than the type of crime, because plaintiff’s allegations pro-
vide no other grounds for defining the risk. There will likely 
be many cases where the type of criminal will carry less 
weight in the foreseeability analysis, such as cases where 
the prior criminal conduct is more similar, recent, frequent, 
and geographically proximate than those alleged by plain-
tiff. In those cases, it may be reasonable to infer that the 
cause of the prior crimes persisted at the time and place of 
the later crime. But, given the lack of similarity, recency, fre-
quency, and geographic proximity, that inference is not rea-
sonable based on plaintiff’s factual allegations. See Delgado 
v. Souders, 334 Or 122, 135, 46 P3d 729 (2002) (whether an 
inference is reasonable is a question of law). Further, plain-
tiff makes no allegation that the Zone specifically attracted 
	
4  The majority appropriately declines to give weight to all of plaintiff’s alle-
gations. 360 Or ___; id. at ___ n 13. 
106	
Piazza v. Kellim
people wanting to commit unprovoked shootings or people 
directing violence at teenage victims. Although the majority 
notes that Ayala targeted the Zone because he sought out 
teenage victims, 360 Or at ___, ___, plaintiff does not allege 
that Ayala’s intention to shoot teenage victims was known 
to defendants prior to the shooting incident and, therefore, 
cannot provide grounds for establishing foreseeability.
	
Once the risk posed by the alleged prior criminal 
acts is properly defined as gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related 
violence, it is apparent that decedent’s harm was not within 
the foreseeable risk: Plaintiff makes no allegation that 
Ayala was involved in gang-, drug-, or alcohol-related activ-
ities or had any connection to gang members, drug dealers, 
or club goers in the neighborhood. Further, eliminating 
the risk of gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related activity in the 
area around the Zone would have had no effect on the like-
lihood of the shooting incident in this case, plainly estab-
lishing that the risks are distinct. To be sure, gang-, drug-, 
and alcohol-related violence are themselves broadly defined 
and generalized risks of harm. But to define the foreseeable 
risks more broadly than that would improperly divorce the 
risk of harm from plaintiff’s theory of liability and from the 
factual circumstances alleged by plaintiff to be known to 
defendants.
	
In reaching its conclusion that all violent assaults 
in the geographic area that plaintiff identified were foresee-
able, the majority fails to consider the similarity, recency, 
frequency, and geographic proximity of the prior criminal 
acts. Instead, the majority’s analysis appears to first go off 
track by reading more into our prior cases than those cases 
can support. According to the majority, “This court’s pre-
vious decisions generally prescribe a relatively broad level 
of generality in assessing the reasonable foreseeability of 
criminal conduct as a limit on liability.” 360 Or at ___ (citing 
Fazzolari, 303 Or at 21).
	
The problem is that, as noted above, when this 
court most recently addressed the process for defining the 
foreseeable risks, that process did not “prescribe a rela-
tively broad level of generality,” as the majority now asserts. 
360 Or at ___. Instead, after reviewing the same case law 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
107
that the majority reviews in this case, we concluded that 
the process for appropriately identifying how generally to 
define the risks requires critically assessing the connection 
between plaintiff’s theory of liability and the facts alleged to 
be within defendants’ knowledge. Chapman, 358 Or at 208. 
As a result, our prior cases in fact do not exhibit a prefer-
ence for either a broad or narrow level of generality. Rather, 
the appropriate level of generality turns on plaintiff’s the-
ory of liability and the facts alleged to be within defendants’ 
knowledge. Whether a different theory of liability and dif-
ferent facts alleged in a different case supported a broad 
level of generality is immaterial.
	
In any event, I do not share the majority’s read-
ing of Fazzolari as prescribing that all types of assaults be 
treated as one category of foreseeable risks. That decision 
never defines an appropriate level of generality. Although 
Fazzolari states that “a school’s responsibility for students’ 
safety against assault is not limited to the risk of rape,” 
303 Or at 21, that statement goes to assessing the reason-
ableness of the school’s precautions. The more foreseeable 
assaults that might be prevented through a particular 
safety precaution, the more likely that it was unreasonable 
for the school not to take that precaution. As the court noted 
earlier in its opinion in Fazzolari, “[I]t is important that all 
foreseeable risks of harm to other classes of persons be con-
sidered in evaluating the reasonableness or unreasonable-
ness of defendant’s conduct.” Id. at 14. But simply because 
all foreseeable assaults should be considered when determin-
ing whether conduct is reasonable does not mean that all 
assaults are foreseeable.
	
The majority attempts to justify the broad level 
of generality by explaining that location-based risks are 
uniquely suited to broadly defined foreseeable risks. The 
majority insists that it is appropriate to use a broad level of 
generality
“where, as here, the risk of harm at a particular location 
is at issue. See, e.g., Uihlein, 282 Or at 641 (‘[T]here must 
be something to alert the storekeeper to the likelihood of 
harm of some kind from a criminal agency.’). That only 
makes sense. When a business owner is on notice that—in 
108	
Piazza v. Kellim
the absence of reasonable precautions—assaultive conduct 
can be anticipated where people are waiting in line to enter 
its premises, it rings hollow to suggest that a specific crime 
pattern triggers the owner’s duty to protect patrons only 
with regard to those specific crimes (such as gang-related 
homicide) that have occurred.”
360 Or at ___. But there is no question that a business 
owner must take reasonable precautions to protect invitees 
from assaultive conduct reasonably expected to occur. The 
question is whether the harm that decedent suffered was 
among those types of assaultive conduct that defendants 
should have reasonably expected to occur.
	
In answering that question, the majority refuses to 
distinguish between criminal conduct based on the charac-
teristics of the shooter:
“To the extent that [defendants’] challenge focuses on the 
precise sequence of events that occurred in this case, defen-
dants invite a taxing level of comparison that this court 
consistently has rejected. As noted, contrary to defendant’s 
focus, foreseeability has reference to ‘the generalized risk 
of the types of incidents and injuries that occurred rather 
than the predictability of the actual sequence of events.’ 
See Fazzolari, 303 Or at 13 (discussing Stewart).”
360 Or at ___. In effect, the majority concludes that an 
assailant’s methods and motivations are irrelevant to the 
foreseeability analysis. But, as described above, plaintiff’s 
allegations make them relevant here because only gang-, 
drug-, and alcohol-related crimes could have given rise to a 
reasonable expectation of injury at the time and place of the 
shooting.
	
From the majority’s perspective, that does not matter 
because gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related violence entailed a 
risk of a violent assault and a violent assault happened. But, 
although we do not require plaintiffs to allege or adduce 
facts establishing that the precise sequence of events was 
foreseeable, we also do not focus only on the end result—e.g., 
a violent assault—while ignoring the manner in which the 
harm occurred. A foreseeable risk cannot be defined without 
connecting the end result to the reasons that the risk was 
foreseeable in the first place. Therefore, “identical injuries, 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
109
if they occur in different ways or at different times, may be 
treated differently.” Restatement (Third) of Torts: Phys. & 
Emot. Harm § 29 comment d (2010).5
	
That principle is well-established in our case law. 
For example, in Hefty v. Comprehensive Care Corporation, 
307 Or 247, 766 P2d 1026 (1988), the plaintiffs were a minor 
who had been a patient at the defendant’s alcohol treatment 
center as well as her parents. Id. at 250. The defendant pre-
maturely discharged the minor, who was still suffering from 
alcoholism, without notifying her parents or doctor or other-
wise providing alternative arrangements for her care. Id. 
The day after the discharge, the minor was involved, as a 
passenger, in a traffic accident that did not involve drugs or 
alcohol. Id. at 251.
	
Plaintiffs sued the defendant for negligently dis-
charging the minor. The court resolved the case on foresee-
ability, asking whether the plaintiff’s “injuries fell within 
the scope of the ‘generalized risk of the types of incidents 
and injuries’ created when defendant discharged [the plain-
tiff].” Id. The court appropriately identified two generalized 
types of foreseeable risks created by the defendant’s con-
duct: (1) that the minor would “resume abusing alcohol and 
drugs”; and (2) that the minor “would engage in activities 
consistent with her impaired judgment and inability to con-
trol her behavior.” Id. at 252.
	
Notably, the court did not define the risk by the end 
result—a traffic accident—even though it was at least plau-
sible that either of those risks could lead to a traffic acci-
dent. If, for example, the minor had been driving and was 
under the influence of alcohol, then the accident might have 
	
5  In Legal Cause in the Law of Torts, which this court relied on in Stewart, 
255 Or at 610, Keeton expressly warned against ignoring the manner in which 
the harm occurred:
“[E]xtreme freakishness of the sequence of events that produces a final state 
of affairs that might have been expected to come about in some other way 
commends itself as a relevant consideration and stands against a practice 
of description of the harm in a way that wholly disregards the mechanism of 
injury. The choice of description involves a degree of orientation toward type 
of harm on the one hand or toward mechanism of harm on the other hand, 
with neither point of view wholly rejected.”
Legal Cause in the Law of Torts at 52.
110	
Piazza v. Kellim
fallen within the scope of the risk that she would resume 
abusing alcohol. But the fact that defendant’s conduct cre-
ated a risk that could lead to a traffic accident and the fact 
that a traffic accident occurred was insufficient, because the 
traffic accident that was risked was a different type of traf-
fic accident than the one that occurred. The issue was not 
whether the defendant’s unreasonable conduct contributed 
to the traffic accident—that would merely establish factual 
causation. The issue was whether the reasons that made 
the defendant’s conduct unreasonable were related to the 
traffic accident that occurred. The court denied liability as 
a matter of law because the plaintiffs adduced no evidence 
establishing that the minor’s substance abuse or impaired 
judgment were related to the traffic accident. The court 
held, “ 
‘In an extreme case a court can decide that no rea-
sonable factfinder could find the risk foreseeable.’ This is an 
‘extreme case.’ 
” Id. at 253 (quoting Donaca v. Curry Co., 303 
Or 30, 38, 734 P2d 1339 (1987)).
	
Similarly, in Oregon Steel Mills, Inc. v. Coopers & 
Lybrand, LLP, 336 Or 329, 83 P3d 322 (2004), we considered 
the liability of an accountant who negligently misstated a 
steel company’s earnings, delaying the company’s stock 
offering, through which the company intended to raise capi-
tal. Id. at 333. By the time the company’s stock was offered, 
the market for steel company stocks had declined. As a 
result, the company’s stock sold for less than it would have if 
it had not been delayed by the accountant’s negligence, and 
the company was unable to raise as much capital as it would 
have otherwise. Id.
	
As in Hefty, the issue in Oregon Steel Mills was not 
factual causation; instead, the issue was foreseeability. Id. 
at 344 (“There is sufficient evidence of factual causation 
* 
* 
* . Rather, the critical issue is whether plaintiff’s market 
losses were a reasonably foreseeable result of defendant’s 
wrongful conduct.”).6 Again, the court did not define the 
risk as the end result—stock-price reduction and resulting 
	
6  See, e.g., Solberg, 306 Or at 490 (distinguishing between whether “defen-
dant’s conduct caused a foreseeable risk of harm,” which is an issue of foreseeabil-
ity, and whether “the conduct was a cause of plaintiff’s harm,” which is an issue 
of factual causation).
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
111
decrease in the capital raised—even though an accountant’s 
negligence entailed such a risk. For example, negligently 
misstating earnings might understate a company’s prior 
earnings, making the company’s stock less desirable and 
impairing the ability to raise capital. Then, there would be 
a connection between the accountant’s negligence and the 
stock-price reduction that impaired the company’s ability to 
raise capital.
	
But the fact that the accountant created a risk of 
a lower stock price and the fact that a lower stock price 
occurred was not sufficient, because the stock-price reduction 
that was risked was a different type of stock-price reduction 
than the one that occurred. Instead, liability required estab-
lishing that the lower stock price occurred in the manner 
that was reasonably anticipated. This court denied liability 
as a matter of law because the company’s stock price was 
not lowered by the accountant’s negligence; it was lowered 
by market fluctuations that affected the entire steel indus-
try and had nothing to do with the accountant’s negligence. 
Id. (“[P]laintiff seeks damages based solely on a decline in 
the price of plaintiff’s stock during the delay that defendant 
caused in getting the offering to market, yet plaintiff admits 
that the price decline affected all steel stocks and was unre-
lated to defendant’s misconduct.”).7
	
Other courts have likewise distinguished between 
the manner of the harm and the end result under facts 
similar to this case. For example, Shadday v. Omni Hotels 
Mgmt. Corp., 477 F3d 511 (7th Cir 2007), involved a negli-
gence claim against a hotel for failing to prevent the sexual 
assault of the plaintiff, who was a hotel guest. Id. at 511. The 
sexual assault was committed by another hotel guest. Id. In 
	
7  The majority attempts to distinguish Hefty and Oregon Steel Mills by 
asserting that, “in contrast to the circumstances in those cases, as alleged in 
plaintiff’s complaint, the assailant’s access to Delgado and the other teens out-
side The Zone was directly connected to defendants’ asserted negligence.” 360 Or 
at ___. But foreseeability does not turn on whether the connection between the 
defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury is direct rather than indirect—both 
of which may establish liability. Instead, foreseeability turns on whether the con-
nection should have been reasonably expected. Stewart, 255 Or at 609. In any 
event, it is unclear why the connection is more direct in this case than in Hefty 
and Oregon Steel Mills. In all three cases, the harm-inducing force is extrinsic to 
the defendant’s conduct.
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denying liability as a matter of law, Judge Posner explained 
that, based on the evidence adduced, the risk of crime was 
from intruders and not from hotel staff or guests. Id. at 516. 
Although “the precautions against guest-on-guest crime 
are not dramatically different from the precautions against 
intruder crime” such that the hotel’s failure to take those 
precautions might have been a but-for cause of the guest’s 
injury, that fact did not establish liability. Id. at 517. Instead, 
regardless of the risk of sexual assault presented by intrud-
ers, “[t]he hotel becomes liable for guest-on-guest crime only 
when it has some reason to think such crime likely,” and the 
plaintiff presented no such evidence in that case. Id.
	
It may be worth asking why the manner of harm 
matters when a defendant’s conduct is unreasonable and the 
end result is the same, regardless of the manner in which it 
occurs. Judge Posner addressed that question in Shadday: 
“[T]he puzzle of the line of cases that [require the harm to 
be within the foreseeable risk] is why the defendant, hav-
ing been negligent, should get off scot-free just because the 
harm that would have been averted had he been careful was 
not foreseeable.” Id. at 518. He notes that, without requiring 
the harm to be within the risk, “negligence liability is poten-
tially too encompassing.” Id.
	
Our case law reflects those concerns as well. 
Liability is intended to turn on fault, and fault is predicated 
on blameworthiness. Stewart, 255 Or at 608. “[T]he com-
munity deems a person to be at fault only when the injury 
caused by him is one which could have been anticipated 
because there was a reasonable likelihood that it could hap-
pen.” Id. at 609. Defining the risk of harm in this case by the 
end result—all violent assaults—would allow defendants to 
be subject to liability for those violent assaults that could 
be reasonably anticipated (gang-, drug-, and alcohol-related 
violence) but also allows defendants to be subject to liability 
for those violent assaults that could not have been reason-
ably anticipated (such as the shooting incident in this case).
	
Focusing on the end result, while ignoring the man-
ner in which that end result was reached, is like crediting a 
broken clock because it happens to be right twice a day. The 
correctness of a broken clock turns on the coincidence that it 
Cite as 360 Or 58 (2016)	
113
was viewed at the same time of day that it previously stopped 
working. But in that case, whether the clock is correct has 
nothing to do with whether the clock is functioning properly. 
Likewise, whether the end result was foreseeable has noth-
ing to do with a defendant’s blameworthiness unless the end 
result occurred in a foreseeable manner. Focusing only on 
the end result allows liability to turn on coincidence rather 
than blameworthiness.
	
Finally, the majority opinion emphasizes the notion 
that questions of foreseeability should be decided by the jury. 
360 Or at ___. Although it is true that foreseeability is a fact 
issue, simply identifying an issue as factual does not entitle 
a party to a jury trial or even to proceed to summary judg-
ment. Rather, it depends on the relevant facts alleged in the 
complaint or established by the summary judgment record. 
Only when those facts are reasonably disputed does the issue 
go to the jury. The jury’s role, of course, properly can be an 
expansive one, particularly in deciding fact-intensive issues 
like foreseeability. But even as to foreseeability, the court 
retains its role as gatekeeper, allowing cases to proceed to 
the jury only if reasonable minds could reach different con-
clusions on whether the facts alleged or adduced could prove 
a plaintiff’s case. Stewart, 255 Or at 607.8
	
The majority defines the foreseeable risk in this 
case broadly as “violent assaults” and leaves it to the jury 
to decide whether the foreseeable risk should be defined 
more narrowly. But the majority fails to explain how a rea-
sonable jury could define the risk that broadly based on the 
narrow facts alleged. How broadly or narrowly a reasonable 
jury may define the generalized risks foreseeably created by 
defendants’ conduct is a question of law appropriately and 
necessarily resolved by the courts. See Fazzolari, 303 Or at 
17 (defining the role of courts).
	
Negligence liability is intended to reflect commu-
nity standards of fairness and proportionality. Our system 
operates on the “assumption that judges as well as juries 
	
8  In Buchler v. Oregon Corrections Div., 316 Or 499, 853 P2d 798 (1993), this 
court rejected a common misreading of Fazzolari as standing for the proposition 
that “all negligence claims based on general foreseeability of a plaintiff’s harm 
would reach the jury.” Id. at 511 n 8.
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Piazza v. Kellim
know something about the kind of conduct that is deemed 
acceptable or not acceptable in the community and that, at 
least at the higher and lower ends of the continuum of that 
standard, the court can say that the conduct does or does 
not meet the standard.” Stewart, 255 Or at 607-08. When 
liability is clearly inappropriate, as it is in this case, “we are 
charged with the duty of withdrawing the issue from the 
jury.” Id. at 609. Although allowing too few cases to proceed 
to trial intrudes on the role of the jury, allowing too many 
cases to proceed to trial abdicates the role of the courts. 
Consequently, I would affirm the trial court’s dismissal and, 
therefore, dissent.
	
Landau, J., joins in this dissenting opinion.