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Nature of Suit Code: 360
Nature of Suit: Other Personal Injury
Cause of Action: 

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United States Court of Appeals

FOR THE DISTRICT OF COLUMBIA CIRCUIT

Argued January 21, 2010 Decided August 17, 2010

No. 08-7137

DONALD WRIGHT SIGMUND,

APPELLANT

v.

STARWOOD URBAN RETAIL VI, LLC, ET AL.,

APPELLEES

v.

WOLF & COHEN LIFE INSURANCE, INC.,

APPELLEE

Appeal from the United States District Court

for the District of Columbia

(No. 1:05-cv-01366)

Paul J. Cornoni argued the cause for appellant. With him

on the brief was Patrick M. Regan. Thanos Basdekis entered an

appearance.

Brian E. Hoffman argued the cause for appellees Starwood

Urban Retail VI, LLC, et al. With him on the brief were Jeffrey

R. Schmieler, Steven Roy Migdal, and Timothy E. Fizer.

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Before: GINSBURG, GARLAND, and BROWN, Circuit Judges.

Opinion for the Court filed by Circuit Judge GARLAND.

GARLAND, Circuit Judge: Solon, the ancient Athenian

lawgiver, made no law against patricide because he thought it

impossible that anyone could commit so unnatural a crime. Two

and a half millennia later, Freud famously claimed the opposite

-- that every son harbors murderous impulses toward his father. 

In this case, we side with the lawyer not the psychoanalyst. 

Donald Sigmund, the accidental victim of a car bomb that his

half-brother intended for their father, cannot recover from the

third-party defendants he has sued unless his half-brother’s

crime was foreseeable. We conclude that neither that crime nor

any similar one was foreseeable, and thus affirm the district

court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants. 

I

At approximately 2:00 p.m. on July 12, 2002, a pipe bomb

exploded in a Chevrolet Blazer in which Donald Sigmund was

sitting. Donald sustained serious injuries in the blast. The

Blazer was owned by Donald’s father, and Donald had gone to

retrieve it from the basement garage of the building in which

they worked in order to run an errand. In March 2003, Donald’s

half-brother, Prescott Sigmund, pled guilty to planting the bomb

and was sentenced to 32 years’ incarceration.

Like Donald, Prescott also had keys to his father’s Blazer

and, like his half-brother, he had also worked for some time at

his father’s office in the building at 5225 Wisconsin Avenue,

N.W. For months, Prescott had been devising a plan to detonate

a bomb that would kill his father, from whom he stood to inherit

approximately $300,000. Prescott knew that his father kept the

Blazer parked in the building’s garage. The garage, which was

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3

open to the public, was ordinarily secured by an overhead

rolling steel garage door and guarded by attendants until about

10 p.m. The garage was also accessible from a staircase in the

building’s lobby, which was open to the public until about

midnight. 

Late in the evening of July 10, Prescott drove to the garage

with the pipe bomb in his car. When he arrived, the overhead

garage door, which had broken sometime shortly before June 24,

was stuck in the open position. Prescott had noticed that the

door was broken the day before. Notwithstanding the months he

had invested in preparing the attack, he later described the

broken garage door as “the opportunity . . . [he] had been

looking for.” Prescott Sigmund Dep. 12 (Feb. 2, 2006).

Prescott parked next to his father’s Blazer, opened the

Blazer with his own key, and -- within the space of

approximately two hours -- planted the pipe bomb inside. The

garage door was repaired on July 11, one day after Prescott

planted the bomb. The Blazer then sat untouched until the

following afternoon, when Donald came to retrieve it and

suffered the blow intended for his father.

One year later, Donald filed suit in federal court, predicated

on diversity jurisdiction, seeking tort damages from Prescott and

the owner, managers, and operators of the garage. The district

court granted summary judgment for the defendants other than

Prescott, finding that Donald could not “meet the legal standard

of a ‘heightened showing of foreseeability’ that is applied when

an injury is caused by the intervening act of a third party.” 

Sigmund v. Starwood Urban Inv., et al., 475 F. Supp. 2d 36, 38

(D.D.C. 2007). Donald then dismissed his claims against

Prescott and filed this appeal. 

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II

We review the district court’s grant of summary judgment

de novo, viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to the

nonmoving party, Donald Sigmund. See Czekalski v. Peters,

475 F.3d 360, 362-63 (D.C. Cir. 2007). We must affirm the

grant if “there is no genuine issue as to any material fact

and . . . the movant is entitled to judgment as a matter of law.” 

FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c). 

Because Sigmund brought this suit based upon diversity of

citizenship, see 28 U.S.C. § 1332, we apply the law of the

District of Columbia. See Smith v. Wash. Sheraton Corp., 135

F.3d 779, 782 (D.C. Cir. 1998). “To establish negligence” under

D.C. law, “a plaintiff must prove a duty of care owed by the

defendant to the plaintiff, a breach of that duty by the defendant,

and damage to the interests of the plaintiff, proximately caused

by the breach.” District of Columbia v. Beretta, U.S.A., Corp.,

872 A.2d 633, 642 n.3 (D.C. 2005) (en banc) (internal quotation

marks omitted).

In Beretta, the D.C. Court of Appeals, sitting en banc,

summarized the analysis applicable “[w]here an injury is caused

by the intervening criminal act of a third party”:

[T]his court has repeatedly held that liability depends

upon a more heightened showing of foreseeability than

would be required if the act were merely negligent. In

such a case, the plaintiff bears the burden of

establishing that the criminal act was so foreseeable

that a duty arises to guard against it. Because of the

extraordinary nature of criminal conduct, the law

requires that the foreseeability of the risk be more

precisely shown.

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872 A.2d at 641 (quoting Potts v. District of Columbia, 697

A.2d 1249, 1252 (D.C. 1997)) (internal quotation marks

omitted). “In this context,” the court said, “the requisite duty of

care required for negligence is a function of foreseeability,

arising only when foreseeability is alleged commensurate with

‘the extraordinary nature of [intervening] criminal conduct.’” 

Id. (quoting Potts, 697 A.2d at 1252) (footnote omitted).1

Moreover, it noted, “‘our opinions have made clear the

demanding nature of the requirement of ‘precise’ proof of a

‘heightened showing of foreseeability’ in the context of an

intervening criminal act involving the discharge of weapons.’” 

Id. at 642 (quoting Potts, 697 A.2d at 1252) (emphasis omitted). 

In Beretta, the court reviewed several of its prior cases,

which, it said, “demonstrate the tight boundaries . . . within

which a claim of common-law negligence must be

framed . . . ‘in the context of an intervening criminal act

involving the discharge of weapons.’” Id. at 643 (quoting Potts,

697 A.2d at 1252) (internal quotation marks and citation

omitted). As the court explained, in Potts v. District of

Columbia it sustained a grant of summary judgment against the

plaintiffs, who had been injured by gunshots as they were

leaving an event at the Washington Convention Center, because

they had “proffered no evidence of any prior gun-related

violence at any other event” held at the Center or planned by the

event’s promoters, “nor any other specific evidence bearing

1

In Workman v. United Methodist Committee on Relief, this

Circuit observed that, although ordinarily “foreseeability is important

to issues of proximate causation and conformity to the standard of

care, . . . the D.C. courts have repeatedly spoken of the heightened

foreseeability requirement in terms of [the] duty” of care. 320 F.3d

259, 265 (D.C. Cir. 2003). Beretta acknowledged Workman’s

observation, but saw “no need to reconsider that framework.” Beretta,

872 A.2d at 642 n.4. 

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directly on the foreseeability of the shooting incident at issue.” 

Id. (quoting Potts, 697 A.2d at 1252). In Bailey v. District of

Columbia, 668 A.2d 817 (D.C. 1995), the court likewise

affirmed a grant of summary judgment against a plaintiff who

was shot as she was leaving a cheerleading competition at a

junior high school. There was no evidence of prior gun-related

violence or assaults at the school, and the court found

insufficient the plaintiff’s showing that “the neighborhood

around the school was a ‘high drug area’ and that shootings and

other criminal acts had taken place there.” Beretta, 872 A.2d at

642 (citing Bailey, 668 A.2d at 820). “[S]uch ‘generic

information,’ by itself,” the court said, “does not create a duty

on the part of the District to protect against the use of firearms

under the circumstances presented here.” Id. (quoting Bailey,

668 A.2d at 820). Finally, in Clement v. Peoples Drug Store,

634 A.2d 425 (D.C. 1993), the court affirmed a directed verdict

against the widow of an employee who was shot to death in the

parking lot of a store. “[T]he only evidence presented with

respect to [the] shooting’s foreseeability was an expert’s opinion

based on police reports of criminal activity in the surrounding

area[,] . . . [and no] evidence was introduced involv[ing] any

gun-related incidents at the particular shopping mall in which

the shooting occurred.” Beretta, 872 A.2d at 642 (quoting Potts,

697 A.2d at 1252) (internal quotation marks omitted). In all

three of these cases, the Court of Appeals said, it “rejected

liability as a matter of law where foreseeability (hence duty) was

not limited by any evidentiary reference to a precise location or

class of persons.” Id.

The D.C. Court of Appeals has issued two opinions on this

subject since Beretta, and both have emphasized the requirement

of a heightened showing of foreseeability in cases involving

intervening criminal acts. In Bruno v. Western Union Financial

Services, Inc., 973 A.2d 713, 721-22 (D.C. 2009), the court

found that injuries the plaintiff sustained during a robbery inside

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the defendant’s gas station were not foreseeable. “There was no

evidence,” the court said, “that any offense in the nature of an

assault had occurred previously inside the gas station,” although

there was evidence of a theft inside and of an armed assault just

outside within the previous two years. Id. at 718-19.

The court’s most recent decision, and the closest factually

to the present case, is Board of Trustees of the University of the

District of Columbia v. DiSalvo, 974 A.2d 868 (D.C. 2009),

which involved a student who was attacked by armed assailants

in a university parking garage. For the plaintiffs to succeed, the

court said, “[i]t is not sufficient to establish a general possibility

that the crime would occur, because . . . the mere possibility of

crime is easily envisioned and heightened foreseeability requires

more precision.” Id. at 872-73. Rather, they must “establish

that [the university] had an increased awareness of the risk of a

violent, armed assault in the parking garage.” Id. at 872. The

court found the plaintiffs failed to meet that standard as a matter

of law. Id. at 875. Although they alleged that security in the

garage was inadequate, they “proffered no evidence that [the

university] had received any complaints about the security of

[its] parking garage.” Id. at 873. And while they pointed to

“several previous on-campus crimes,” including three assaults,

“none was committed with a weapon, none was in a campus

parking garage, and none resulted in any serious injury to the

victim.” Id.

Finally, DiSalvo noted that, in “the few cases where [courts

in the District of Columbia] have held that a defendant had a

duty to protect the plaintiff from a criminal act[,] . . . the facts in

evidence established that the defendant had reason to anticipate

the type of particular criminal attack that actually occurred.” Id.

at 873. For example, “in Kline v. 1500 Massachusetts Ave.

Apartment Corp., 439 F.2d 477 (D.C. Cir. 1970), where the

plaintiff was assaulted and robbed in the common hallway of her

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apartment building just two months after another tenant was

similarly attacked in the same hallway, the court found

heightened foreseeability because ‘the crimes of violence,

robbery, and assault [ ] had been occurring with mounting

frequency on the premises’ and the landlord had been asked to

secure the building in light of the crime.” Id. at 873-74 (quoting

Kline, 439 F.2d at 480). The court also distinguished District of

Columbia v. Doe, 524 A.2d 30 (D.C. 1987), “where a young

student was abducted from inside of her elementary school

classroom and raped by an unknown intruder,” on the grounds

that there were “‘crimes against persons in and around the

school . . . ; sexual assaults and other violent activity in the

surrounding area; and deficient school security [, including the]

presence of adult males who freely roamed throughout the

school.” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 874 (quoting Doe, 524 A.2d at

34).2

 “In these cases,” the court concluded, “the common thread

is that the facts demonstrating heightened foreseeability showed,

if not awareness of the precise risk, close similarity in nature or

temporal and spatial proximity to the crime at issue.” Id.3

2

The court further distinguished Doe on the ground that, “[i]n

addition to the evidence of criminal activity and lapsed security . . . ,

the victim was also entitled to a heightened duty of protection because

she was a young child in public school over which the District of

Columbia exercised custodial care, who was ‘particularly vulnerable

to the conduct that befell her,’ and was ‘taken from a place that we

would expect to be a safe haven.’” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 874 n.4

(quoting Bailey, 668 A.2d at 821). In Beretta, the court described Doe

as the “high-water mark” of its willingness to recognize a duty to

protect against an intervening criminal act. 872 A.2d at 642.

3

On the same grounds, DiSalvo distinguished two cases in which

this Circuit, sitting in diversity, found sufficient evidence of

heightened foreseeability. In Doe v. Dominion Bank, N.A., 963 F.2d

1552 (D.C. Cir. 1992), where a woman was raped inside a building,

DiSalvo noted that the rape took place “on an unsecured vacant floor

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III

Sigmund cannot satisfy the heightened foreseeability

standard required by the D.C. Court of Appeals. Although he

need not show “previous occurrences of the particular type of

harm” that befell him, he must show the defendants’ “increased

awareness of the danger of a particular criminal act.” DiSalvo,

974 A.2d at 872 (quoting Doe, 524 A.2d at 33). “[I]n the

context of an intervening criminal act involving the discharge of

[a] weapon[]” -- and, a fortiori, of a pipe bomb -- the

requirement of “precise proof of a heightened showing of

foreseeability” is particularly demanding. Beretta, 872 A.2d at

643 (internal quotation marks omitted). As the court required in

DiSalvo, Sigmund must “establish that [the defendants] had an

increased awareness of the risk of a violent, armed assault in the

parking garage.” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 872 (emphasis added).

Needless to say, there is no history of car bombings at 5225

Wisconsin Avenue. Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 40. Nor is

there any history of “homicides, or assaults with intent to kill on

the premises.” Id. In fact, in the six-and-a-half years preceding

the bombing, there were only four crimes reported in the garage,

. . . where other criminal activity had occurred and tenants had

specifically warned the landlord about the potential danger posed by

the lack of security, vacant floors, and unauthorized persons in the

building.” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 874 (citing Dominion Bank, 963 F.2d

at 1555-56). Similarly, DiSalvo noted that in Novak v. Capital

Management & Development Corp., 452 F.3d 902 (D.C. Cir. 2006),

the plaintiffs “were attacked by a group of men immediately outside

of a club’s alley entrance, the entrance lacked any security measures,

and the club owner had increased awareness due to prior fights in and

around the club, including repeated fights at the alley entrance.” 

DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 874 (citing Novak, 452 F.3d at 904).

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none of which involved an assault of any kind.4

 And, of all of

the crimes reported at the building during that period, only four

were crimes against persons -- none involving “a violent, armed

assault” resulting “in any serious injury to the victim,” DiSalvo,

974 A.2d at 872-73. See Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 40.5

 In

2001 and 2002, there were no crimes against persons reported at

the building at all. Id.

Sigmund wants us to widen our focus beyond the garage

and building to the surrounding area. Although District of

Columbia cases certainly have done so, see, e.g., Doe, 524 A.2d

at 32, both DiSalvo and Beretta caution against opening the

aperture too wide, see DiSalvo 974 A.2d at 874 (noting that, in

cases finding “heightened foreseeability,” the facts showed

“close similarity in nature or temporal and spatial proximity to

the crime at issue”); Beretta, 872 A.2d at 642 (noting that the

court has rejected liability where the evidence was not limited

“to a precise location or class of persons”). In any event, the

evidence regarding violent assaults in the surrounding area is

also thin. Sigmund identifies 503 crimes within a five-block

radius of 5225 Wisconsin Avenue that were reported to the

police during the two years preceding the bombing. Al Ortenzo,

Security Expert Report 10. None of those was a murder or an

attempted murder. Al Ortenzo Dep. 104 (Sept. 25, 2006). Of

the 503 crimes, Sigmund identifies only one aggravated assault

and ten assaults with a deadly weapon, see Al Ortenzo Aff. 20

4

 The crimes were: one theft of a car, two thefts from cars, and

the destruction of a car window. Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 40. 

5

These crimes consisted of: a robbery at gunpoint in the area

behind the building, a customer in a retail store kicking an employee

in the buttocks, an employee pushing a customer in the chest with his

finger, and a person using his head to strike another person’s head. 

Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 40.

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(Jan. 8, 2007); his evidence does not indicate that any “resulted

in any serious injury to the victim,” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 873.

Sigmund further proffers that “10 percent of the local crime

occurred in parking lots and garages.” Appellant’s Br. 25. This

statistic is just the kind of “generic information” about crime

that the D.C. Court of Appeals has found insufficient to establish

foreseeability. Beretta, 872 A.2d at 642 (quoting Bailey, 668

A.2d at 820) (internal quotation marks omitted). The conclusory

statements of Sigmund’s experts that crime in the garage should

have been foreseeable6

 are similarly insufficient. See DiSalvo,

974 A.2d at 872-73.

Citing Dominion Bank, Sigmund argues that, in addition to

evidence of prior incidents, “‘the condition of the premises is a

critical factor in assessing the foreseeability of criminal

conduct.’” Appellant’s Br. 14 (quoting Dominion Bank, 963

F.2d at 1559). Here, he argues, the overhead door had been

stuck open for approximately three weeks, creating “a gaping

hole in the building’s security.” Id. at 16. Sigmund maintains

that this condition, in combination with the history of criminal

incidents, was sufficient to satisfy the requirement of heightened

foreseeability.7

6

See, e.g., Al Ortenzo Aff. 18 (averring that there was “reasonable

notice of the high risk of future criminal acts” and “future violent

crime” on the property); James Womack Dep. 99 (averring that the

defendants “should have been able to foresee any incidence of

someone . . . entering the premises to do harm, bodily or physically”).

7

Cf. DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 872 (stating that “heightened

foreseeability ‘does not require previous occurrences of the particular

type of harm, but can be met instead by a combination of factors

which give defendants an increased awareness of the danger of a

particular criminal act’” (quoting Doe, 524 A.2d at 33)).

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As DiSalvo explained, however, Dominion Bank was a case

in which the crime occurred in a location “where other criminal

activity had occurred and tenants had specifically warned the

landlord about the potential danger posed by the lack of

security.” DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 874; see Dominion Bank, 963

F.2d at 1561 (noting that “the Bank had incessant notice of

criminal activity -- including theft, burglary, drug use, and

possibly prostitution” at the building). The same was true in the

other cases Sigmund cites as focusing on the condition of the

premises as a factor in foreseeability.8

Sigmund produced no evidence of crime in the garage while

the door was broken, and no evidence that tenants had

complained about the door’s condition. Nor were there security

complaints or requests of any kind for more than a year before

the bombing. See Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 40; Thomas

Updike Dep. 62-63 (Nov. 9, 2004); Constance Collins Dep. 165-

66 (July 30, 2004). We also agree with the district court that

“the fact that the garage was ordinarily readily accessible

through the . . . lobby undercuts plaintiff’s argument that the

8

See DiSalvo, 974 A.2d at 873 (stating that in Kline, “‘crimes of

violence, robbery, and assault [ ] had been occurring with mounting

frequency on the premises’ and the landlord had been asked to secure

the building in light of the crime” (quoting Kline, 439 F.2d at 480)); 

Spar v. Obwoya, 369 A.2d 173, 177 (D.C. 1977) (noting that “there

was evidence of . . . individual apartment units of the building being

burglarized by forcible entry from the common hallway,” as well as

“complaints [by] the tenants”). In DiSalvo itself, the court rejected the

import of the plaintiffs’ claims of inadequate garage security, noting

that none of the crimes they detailed were committed in a campus

parking garage, that they “proffered no evidence that [the university]

had received any complaints about the security of [the] parking

garage,” and that the one request for more security it had received

“was routine and pro-active, . . . not in response to any specific

security concerns.” 974 A.2d at 873. 

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broken garage door made the bombing more foreseeable.” 475

F. Supp. 2d at 47.9

Finally, Sigmund maintains that there was a “special

relationship” between him and the defendants, which justifies

application of the “sliding scale” described by the Court of

Appeals in DiSalvo. There, the court said that “the relationship

between the defendant and plaintiff and the defendant’s liability

to the plaintiff can be viewed on a ‘sliding scale,’ whereby a

relationship entailing a greater duty of protection may require a

lesser showing of foreseeability in order for liability to attach.” 

Id. at 872 (citing Workman v. United Methodist Comm. on

Relief, 320 F.3d 259, 264 (D.C. Cir. 2003)). But DiSalvo

expressed doubt that the defendant university in that case owed

its “adult, commuter students” such a “heightened duty of

protection,” id., and the relationship Sigmund claims to the

defendants here seems no more significant. In any event,

DiSalvo held that, “even if the relationship . . . did entail a

greater duty of protection,” finding the defendant liable “would

still require a heightened showing of foreseeability greater than”

the DiSalvo plaintiffs had shown. Id. Because Sigmund has

made a weaker showing than those plaintiffs did, “there is no

genuine issue as to any material fact and . . . the [defendants are]

entitled to judgment as a matter of law,” FED. R. CIV. P. 56(c). 

9

Because the district court disposed of the case on the ground that

Sigmund failed to show foreseeability as a matter of law, we do not

address the defendants’ contention that he also failed to show that the

condition of the garage door was a proximate cause of his injuries

because access to the garage was available through the lobby. See

Sigmund, 475 F. Supp. 2d at 48; id. at 39 & n.3. 

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IV

For the foregoing reasons, the judgment of the district court

is

Affirmed.

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