Case Name: Michael S. CARONIA v. McKENZIE'S PASTRY SHOPPES, et al.
Court: Louisiana Court of Appeal
Jurisdiction: Louisiana
Decision Date: 1997-10-01
Citations: 700 So. 2d 1315
Docket Number: No. 97-CA-0681
Parties: Michael S. CARONIA v. McKENZIE’S PASTRY SHOPPES, et al.
Judges: Before Klees, Byrnes and Plotkin, JJ.
Reporter: Southern Reporter, Second Series
Volume: 700
Pages: 1315–1322

Head Matter:
Michael S. CARONIA v. McKENZIE’S PASTRY SHOPPES, et al.
No. 97-CA-0681.
Court of Appeal of Louisiana, Fourth Circuit.
Oct. 1, 1997.
Perrin C. Butler, Louis M. Butler, Butler & Butler, Metairie, for Plaintiff/Appellant.
Michael R. Zsembik, Waller & Associates, Metairie, for Defendant/Appellee.
Before Klees, Byrnes and Plotkin, JJ.

Opinion:
JiPLOTKIN, Judge.
Michael Caronia, the plaintiff in this matter, filed suit against Entringer Bakeries, Inc. and McKenzie's Bakery. He alleges that he was injured in a McKenzie's Bakery during the perpetration of an armed robbery. Defendant, Entringer Bakeries Inc., filed an Exception of No Cause of Action which was heard on July 26, 1996. The trial court granted the Exception on July 30,1996, without assigning written reasons, but allowing plaintiff ten days to amend his petition. Plaintiff did not amend his petition, thus his ease was dismissed with prejudice. It is from the judgment of the trial court that plaintiff now appeals.
FACTS:
Michael Caronia alleged in his petition that he suffered injuries as a result of an armed robbery that took place on April 16, 1995 at the McKenzie's Bakery located at 901 Harrison Avenue. He claims that Entringer's and/or McKenzie's owed him a duty of protection from such attacks because that particular McKenzie's Bakery was the subject of prior robberies and was located in an area |2prone to robberies. The petition is unclear regarding how Mr. Caronia was injured during the armed robbery.
DISCUSSION:
The purpose of an exception of no cause of action is to determine the sufficiency in law of the petition. City of New Orleans v. Board of Com'rs, 640 So.2d 237, 241 (La. 1994). It questions whether the petition sufficiently alleges grievances for which the law affords a remedy. Lewis v. Aluminum Company of America, 588 So.2d 167, 169 (La.App. 4th Cir.1991), writ denied, 592 So.2d 411 (La.1992). The reviewing court is to make a de novo determination because the exception raises a question of law and the lower court's decision is based only on the sufficiency of the petition. When reviewing the exception, the well-pleaded facts of the petition are accepted as true. Id. Furthermore,
[p]leadings must be construed reasonably so as to afford litigants their day in court, to arrive at the truth, and to do substantial justice. When it can reasonably do so, the court should maintain a petition against a peremptory exception so as to afford the litigant an opportunity to present his evidence.
Kuebler v. Martin, 578 So.2d 113, 114 (La. 1991) (citations omitted). Thus, assuming that all the facts are true, the court must determine if the plaintiff has a cause of action.
Plaintiff alleges in his petition that the particular McKenzie's where the armed robbery took place was the subject of prior armed robberies. Assuming this to be true, Mr. Caronia should be permitted to present evidence to support this allegation for the reasons cited herein.
_Jj_In general, the duty owed by a business owner to its customers is that of reasonable care. This duty extends to keeping the premises safe from unreasonable risks of harm or warning persons of known dangers. Rodriguez v. New Orleans Public Serv., Inc., 400 So.2d 884, 887 (La.1981); Owens v. Regional Transit Authority, 559 So.2d 870, 871 (La.App. 4th Cir.1990).
A business owner does not normally owe a duty to its patrons to protect them from the criminal activities of third persons. However, there are instances when a business establishment will be held liable for injuries caused by the criminal acts of third persons. In Smith v. Walgreens Louisiana Co., Inc., 542 So.2d 766, 768 (La.App. 4th Cir.1989), this Court found that an owner of a business can be liable if the specific crime was foreseeable and if it was anticipated that the crime would occur at or near the time the incident actually happened. In that case, the victim was abducted from the Walgreens' parking lot. She presented deposition testimony from a security expert who stated that the particular area where the victim was attacked had the most crime of all of downtown New Orleans. Furthermore, the manager of Walgreens admitted in his deposition that this was a high crime area and that his car was vandalized in the same parking lot. This Court, therefore, found that the victim in that case presented adequate evidence to withstand the defendant's motion for summary judgment.
In Willie v. American Casualty Company; 547 So.2d 1075, 1083 (La.App. 1st Cir.1989), the First Circuit also recognized the duty of a business to protect patrons from the criminal acts of a third person in situations where the business "had particular knowledge of the impending occurrences of the criminal act." The victim in that case was abducted from a parking lot and then severely injured when Lshot by the offenders. The jury found the crime to be foreseeable because there was no security personnel, inferior lighting was used in the parking lot, and there were abnormally high occurrences of crimes against persons on the premises.
To determine ,if criminal activity was foreseeable, courts have considered whether similar incidents occurred on the premises. Smith, 542 So.2d at 768. The jurisprudence indicates that this determination is made based on the individual facts of each case. For example, in Romaguera v. Piccadilly Cafeterias, Inc., 648 So.2d 1000 (La.App. 5th Cir.1994), writ denied, 650 So.2d 1183 (La. 1995), the court found that one prior incident on the premises was adequate to provide foreseeability. In that case, there had been an attempted robbery inside the restaurant. Piccadilly responded by placing an armed security guard inside the restaurant, thus assuming the duty to protect. However, Ro-maguera and her family were attacked in the parking lot. She received serious injuries as a result of a gunshot wound. The court stated that "[t]he fact that there had been an attempted robbery inside the restaurant should, we think, make any reasonable person realize that such an attempt would be even more likely to occur outside the restaurant in the parking area." Id. at 1004-05. Furthermore, the plaintiffs expert provided evidence that the general location was unsafe.
Also, in Hanewinckel v. St. Paul's Property & Liability Insurance Co., 611 So.2d 174 (La.App. 5th Cir.1992), writ denied, 614 So.2d 65 (La.1993), the court found that the criminal acts of a particular person were foreseeable. The defendant, Ochsner Hospital, received information that' a particularly described suspicious character was on hospital premises at 4:30 a.m. The court found that this information clearly created a situation where an attack was foreseeable and imminent. Security guards did not take any action based on that information, thus _Jjjbecause an attack did occur, they were negligent by not attempting to prevent it.
But, in Taylor v. Stewart, 672 So.2d 302, 307 (La.App. 1st Cir.1996), the court held that there was no foreseeability, thus no duty to protect. In that case, the employee of a bar was injured by a third person, who was also a frequent patron. The evidence showed that while the employee of the bar and the third person had a documented history of arguing, the injured employee had recently told the owner of the bar that there would not be any more problems. Thus, the court found that there was no foreseeability that the two would argue again and that Taylor would be injured when the argument led to violence. Also, in Perkins v. K-Mart, 657 So.2d 725, 729 (La.App. 1st Cir.1995), writ denied, 662 So.2d 477 (La.1995), the court did not find foreseeability. In that case, the victim was attacked in the parking lot. Until then, there was only one prior instance of criminal activity in the K-Mart parking lot. That incident occurred two years before the victim's attack. The court held that K-Mart did not have knowledge of the intended robbery of the plaintiff, nor should it have such knowledge based on only one prior incident of criminal activity.
In Robinson v. Yousuf, 668 So.2d 436 (La. App. 4th Cir.1996), writ denied, 670 So.2d 1232 (La.1996), Robinson brought suit for injuries she sustained when shot at the defendant's gas station. Robinson had been purchasing gas when she heard gunshots in the distance. Within a minute, the victims of the gunshots pulled into the parking lot in a truck. The plaintiff went to the truck to try to help while another patron and the worker both called 9-1-1. After leaving the victims, the plaintiff was walking back towards the building when another truck pulled into the parking lot and began spraying the area with bullets. The plaintiff was shot, thus precipitating her lawsuit. This Court held that there was 16no significant prior crime at that particular gas station to create a duty to protect. The evidence showed that there had been at most five prior instances over a three year period where the police had to be summoned, but that they were all minor and did not involve violence. Furthermore, even if there was a duty to protect, it was unforeseeable that the shooters .would enter the parking lot and begin shooting randomly.
In addition to a duty arising because criminal activity is foreseeable, a business owner can also be liable if he voluntarily assumes a duty of protection by hiring security guards to protect the business and its patrons. When a duty to protect others against such criminal misconduct has been assumed, liability may be created by a negligent breach of that duty. Harris v. Pizza Hut of Louisiana, Inc., 455 So.2d 1364, 1369, 1371 (La.1984). Carpenter v. Johnson, 664 So.2d 1354, 1357 (La.App. 1st Cir.1995). There is no indication in the pleadings that the particular McKenzie's had security personnel, thus the doctrine of assumption of duty is not applicable.
The defendant cites to Dye v. Schwegmann Bros. Giant Supermarkets, Inc., 627 So.2d 688 (La.App. 4th Cir.1993), writ denied, 634 So.2d 401 (La.1994), to support its position that third parties' criminal actions do not create liability on the part of business owners. The plaintiff cites to Mundy v. Department of Health & Human Resources, 620 So.2d 811 (La.1993) to support his position that business owners do have a duty to protect their customers from the illegal actions of third parties. However, both of these cases can be distinguished from the instant situation. In Mundy, the Department of Health & Human Resources had assumed the duty to protect others against criminal acts of third persons through the use of security guards. Thus, the relevant issue in that case was whether the security guards on duty the night the plaintiff was attacked breached their duty to act as reasonable ^security guards and, thus, were negligent. The court ultimately found that the victim's attack was the only criminal incident in the particular locale. This was insufficient to find a breach of the duty undertaken by the security guards. The court also found that even if there was a security guard posted at the particular elevator bank where the plaintiff was attacked, the security guard would not have prevented the attack because the perpetrator did not instigate the crime until he and the victim were alone within the elevator. Mundy, 620 So.2d at 814.
In Dye, this court refused to adopt a general duty owed by business entities to its patrons to protect them from attack by third persons, but found that Schwegmann's had assumed that duty. Irrespective of this assumed duty, the facts were analyzed to determine if Sehwegmann's had breached its general duty of reasonable care. We found that it did not. This Court also analyzed the additional duty assumed by Schwegmanns to determine if it had been breached. We held that it had not been breached. The victim in Dye was shot and killed in the parking lot after leaving the Schwegmann's building. The evidence showed that the parking lot where the incident took place was regularly patrolled by security guards. Only minutes before the incident, a guard had been patrolling the row of cars where the victim was shot. Thus, the security guards were not negligent.
Dye and Mundy are distinguishable because they involved the business entity voluntarily adopting the duty to protect patrons from criminal activities perpetrated by third parties. The broader question in this case is whether McKenzie's had a duty to provide greater security because it should have foreseen the risk posed by third parties based on past criminal activities at that particular McKenzie's. If the plaintiff can prove that a sufficient pattern of prior criminal activity occurred at this particular McKenzie's, creating a situation whereby a future assault was foreseeable, McKenzie's may have a duty to protect from such criminal Igmisconduct. The plaintiffs petition alleged that this McKenzie's had been the subject of prior crime. Thus, he has stated a cause of action and the case should not have been dismissed. The Exception of No Cause of Action is vacated and reversed.
REVERSED AND REMANDED.
BYRNES, J., concurs.
. McKenzie's Bakery is a division of Entringer Bakeries, Inc.
. The La. C.C.P. provides in Article 931 that no evidence may he introduced to support or controvert an objection raised by means of a peremptory exception. Thus, the trial court was not to consider the facts alleged in the Memorandum in Support of the Exception and we will not consider these allegations either. Defendant alleged that the particular McKenzie's was in Lakeview, one of the "safest" areas of New Orleans.