Source: s3://data.kl3m.ai/documents/govinfo/USCOURTS/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06410/USCOURTS-ca10-90-06410-0/pdf.json

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

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UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS 

TENTH CIRCUIT 

EDWIN BEIN, SR., ) 

) 

Plaintiff-Appellant, ) 

) 

FI LED 

Uoited States Court of Appeals 

Tenth Circuit 

J IN 13 1991 

.&OBERT L. HOECKER 

Clerk 

v. ) No. 90-6410 

) 

CAMPBELL MOTEL PROPERTIES d/b/a ) 

Travelers Inn Motel, a foreign ) 

corporation, ) 

) 

Defendant-Appellee. ) 

(D.C. No. CIV-89-1993-W) 

(W.D. Okla.) 

ORDER AND JUDGMENT* 

Before McKAY, SEYMOUR, and EBEL, Circuit Judges. 

The parties have agreed that this case may be submitted for 

decision on the briefs. See Fed. R. App. P. 34(f); 10th Cir. R. 

34.1.2. The case is therefore ordered submitted without oral 

argument. 

The appellant, Edwin D. Bein, Sr., was wounded in an armed 

robbery in the parking lot of the Travelers Inn Motel, which is 

owned by the defendant, Campbell Motel Properties, Inc. Mr. Bein 

brought suit alleging that the defendant had negligently failed to 

* This order and judgment has no precedential value and shall 

not be cited, or used by any court within the Tenth Circuit, 

except for purposes of establishing the doctrines of the law of 

the case, res judicata, or collateral estoppel. 10th Cir. R. 

36.3. 

Appellate Case: 90-6410 Document: 010110119434 Date Filed: 06/13/1991 Page: 1 
warn him of the danger of armed robbery and had provided inadequate security. The trial court granted summary judgment for 

Campbell and denied Mr. Bein's Motion to Alter, Amend and Vacate 

Judgment. Mr. Bein now appeals. 

Mr. Bein and three family members checked into the Travelers 

Inn in Oklahoma City at about 10:00 p.m. on December 15, 1988. He 

parked his car in front of his room and unloaded the luggage. 

When he returned to the car to lock it, he was assailed by two 

men. They struck him and threatened to shoot him unless he gave 

up his wallet. Mr. Bein screamed to his wife to close the door to 

the room and call the police. He engaged in a struggle with one 

assailant who was armed with a gun. The gun discharged, and the 

bullet entered Mr. Bein's lower thigh, shattering his femur. The 

assailants fled without completing the robbery. 

Mr. Bein pointed out that, in the five months previous to 

this incident, eight other armed robberies had occurred in motel 

parking lots in the Oklahoma City area. One incident occurred at 

a motel three blocks from the Travelers Inn. One occurred as far 

away as ten miles. No violent incidents had occurred at the 

Travelers Inn. The police were searching for the two men who were 

believed to have perpetrated these robberies and had issued "Crime 

Stoppers" bulletins to local media about the pair, but the motel 

manager stated in her deposition that she was unaware of the robberies at other motels. 

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The defendant employed off-duty policemen to provide security 

after 10:00 p.m. The security officers patrolled the Travelers 

Inn and two other motels on the same block. On the night Mr. Bein 

was shot, the security men had just come on duty. They arrived at 

the scene of the shooting within minutes. At the time of the 

shooting, the parking lot was well-lit and the motel was surrounded by a fence on three sides which limited ingress and 

egress. 

Mr. Bein argued that the motel employees should have known 

about the robberies in the area and should have warned him about 

them. He further argued that the defendant should have had a 

full-time security guard rather than sharing a security guard with 

two other motels, that the defendant should have monitored the 

security guard's activities more closely, and that the security 

guard should have been required to check with the motel clerk on a 

regular basis as suggested by the motel's manual on security procedures. 

"In reviewing a summary judgment order, the appellate court 

applies the same standard employed by the trial court under Rule 

56(c) of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure." Osgood v. State 

Farm Mut. Auto. Ins. Co., 848 F.2d 141, 143 (10th Cir. 1988). "We 

will affirm a grant of summary judgment if it is clear from the 

record that there are no genuine issues of material fact and the 

defendants are entitled to judgment as a matter of law." Willner 

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. ./ 

v. Budig, 848 F.2d 1032, 1033-34 (10th Cir. 1988), cert. denied, 

488 U.S. 1031 (1989). 

The trial court granted summary judgment for Campbell 

because, even assuming that the defendant had breached a duty to 

warn and/or to provide adequate security, "a jury could not reasonably find that such breach in the circumstances of this case 

was a direct cause of the injuries Mr. Bein sustained." Bein v. 

Campbell Motel Properties, Inc., No. CIV-89-1993-W, slip op. at 

7 (W.D. Okla. Aug. 14, 1990). The court held that, under Oklahoma 

law, the armed robbery was a supervening cause which relieved the 

defendants of liability. 

Under Oklahoma law, the question of proximate cause "becomes 

one of law when there is no evidence from which the jury could 

reasonably find a causal nexus between the negligent act and the 

resulting injuries." Thompson v. Presbyterian Hosp., Inc., 652 

P.2d 260, 263 (Okla. 1982) (holding that surgeon could not have 

reasonably foreseen that anesthesiologist would improperly administer anesthesia and fail to monitor patient, therefore surgeon's 

prescription of premedication which interacted with anesthesia was 

not proximate cause of patient's death). A supervening cause 

breaks the causal nexus between a defendant's negligence and 

resulting injury if it is "(l) independent of the original act, 

(2) adequate of itself to bring about the result and (3) one whose 

occurrence was not reasonably foreseeable." Id. at 264. The 

trial court held that the armed robbery satisfied each prong of 

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this test. The court noted that no violent incidents had occurred 

at the Travelers Inn before. Therefore, the court "[could] not 

find that a reasonable person would have anticipated or foreseen 

that such would happen on December 15, 1988." Slip op. at 8. 

Without expressing a view as to the validity of the district 

court's causation analysis, we affirm the district court. But we 

do so because we believe that in this case Oklahoma law would not 

impose a duty upon the defendants to do more than they concededly 

did to protect Mr. Bein from the activities of his assailants. 

Under Oklahoma law, "the owner or operator of a motel is not 

an insurer of the safety of a customer who uses the premises, but 

only owes the duty to maintain the premises in a reasonably safe 

and suitable condition." Buck v. Del City Apartments, Inc., 431 

P.2d 360, 364 (Okla. 1967). The Oklahoma Supreme Court expressly 

rejected the imposition of broad liability upon landlords for 

criminal activities upon their premises. Lay v. Dworman, 732 P.2d 

455, 458 (Okla. 1986). In Lay, the Oklahoma court also stated 

that the modern-day landlord-tenant relationship was analogous to 

the relationship of innkeeper-guest. Id. The plaintiff in Lay 

was raped in her apartment. The Oklahoma court held that the 

landlords had breached a duty to the plaintiff because they had 

knowledge of previous criminal activity in the complex, and 

because the plaintiff had complained about a defective door lock 

on her apartment which the landlords had failed to repair. Id. at 

459. Lay appears to be a narrow decision, confined to these 

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Appellate Case: 90-6410 Document: 010110119434 Date Filed: 06/13/1991 Page: 5 
facts, and no such facts appear in this case. In this case, the 

defendant had no notice of violent crime on the premises, and only 

a generalized notice that motel parking lot robberies were taking 

place in the Oklahoma City area. 

It should also be noted that the breach of duty found under 

the specific facts of Lay was applicable to the private areas of 

the apartment complex. With regard to the common areas, the court 

stated the landlord's duty as follows: "Under present Oklahoma 

law a landlord has the duty to use ordinary care to maintain the 

common portions of leased premises, over which he has retained 

control, in a safe condition." Id. at 458. While Mr. Bein argues 

that that duty would encompass a duty to have a full-time security 

guard on the premises and to warn each guest that motel parking 

lot robberies had occurred in Oklahoma City, we do not think that 

Oklahoma extends the duty that far. In Lay, the Oklahoma court 

specifically stated that a generalized allegation of crime in the 

area, coupled with an allegation that security measures were inadequate, is not sufficient to go to a jury: 

In this day of an inordinate volume of criminal activity, there are a myriad of "security devices" available 

to the public, including the hiring of armed guards. No 

one really knows why people commit crime, hence no one 

really knows what is "adequate" deterrence in any given 

situation. While bright lights may deter some, they 

will not deter all. Some persons cannot be deterred by 

anything short of impenetrable walls and armed guards. 

It would be intolerable and grossly unfair to permit 

a lay jury, after the fact, to determine in any case 

that security measures were "inadequate," especially in 

light of the fact that the decision would always be rendered in a case where the security had in fact proved to 

be inadequate. 

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Id. (quoting 7735 Hollywood Boulevard Venture v. Superior Court, 

116 Cal. App. 3d 901, 172 Cal. Rptr. 528, 530 (1981)). 

We AFFIRM the district court's grant of summary judgment for 

the defendant. The mandate shall issue forthwith. 

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Entered for the Court 

Monroe G. McKay 

Circuit Judge 

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