Opinion ID: 1193381
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 3

Heading: Security Forces

Text: Plaintiff alleges that defendant was negligent in failing to provide any security forces to protect patrons of its supermarket and discourage the commission of crimes therein. Plaintiff places her main reliance upon 2 Restatement (Second) of Torts § 344: A possessor of land who holds it open to the public for entry for his business purposes is subject to liability to members of the public while they are upon the land for such a purpose, for physical harm caused by the accidental, negligent, or intentionally harmful acts of third persons or animals, and by the failure of the possessor to exercise reasonable care to (a) discover that such acts are being done or are likely to be done, or [7] (b) give a warning adequate to enable the visitors to avoid the harm, or otherwise to protect them against it. Plaintiff relies more particularly on Comment f : Since the possessor is not an insurer of the visitor's safety, he is ordinarily 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 anticipate careless or criminal conduct on the part of third persons, either generally 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. We apparently adopted § 344 and Comment f as being a part of the law of this state in Whelchel v. Strangways, 275 Or. 297, 304, 550 P.2d 1228 (1976). The record shows that plaintiff was assailed from the rear without provocation and that she did not hear the assailant approach. There is nothing in the record to show that any of defendant's employes either took any prior notice of the assailant or had any reason to do so before his harmful act against plaintiff. Nor is there anything in the record to show defendant was otherwise aware that this particular harmful act was about to occur. We hold, therefore, that as a matter of law defendant did not fail to exercise reasonable care to discover that this particular harmful act was being done. This does not dispose of the question of whether defendant failed to exercise reasonable care to discover that this harmful act was likely to be done. The store is located in a high crime rate area, but the record discloses that only shoplifting occurs in the store. Plaintiff's affidavit shows that various types of crimes, including assaults, are likely to be committed in the area if one does not take precautions. In her affidavit plaintiff swears that she does not feel safe on the streets (emphasis ours) at night in the area. Significantly, however, in her deposition she swears that in her four years of shopping at this store every two weeks on the average she never saw any evidence of crime in and around the store. We have earlier discussed the want of significance of Hough's feeling of uneasiness and his characterization of the store as being the roughest one where he has worked. The same may be said for Davis' statement that he felt spooky at times. Other supermarket operators in the general area had some security protection at the time. Nowhere in the record or in the briefs is there any hint of the kind of security protection at those other stores; furthermore, upon this record it is sheer speculation as to why the operators of those stores had some security protection. Perhaps, unlike in the case of defendant's store, there had been crimes committed in and around these stores (other than shoplifting), and perhaps the commission of such crimes led those operators to employ some kind of security. We find all these factors insufficient to charge defendant with notice that a harmful act of this kind was likely to occur in its store. Since, as a matter of law, on this record defendant neither knew nor had reason to know of the likelihood of harmful acts of this kind against its patrons in general and plaintiff in particular, no duty to provide a security force arose prior to this plaintiff's injury.