Opinion ID: 1584799
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: was crain's injury reasonably foreseeable?

Text: Like the victim in Lyle, Crain was assaulted by an unknown assailant. As distinguished from Kelly and Grisham, Crain was not involved in a squabble with an unruly guest at the Moose Lodge nor did he interject himself voluntarily into an already hostile situation. He asserts, therefore, that because of the high crime rate in the neighborhood, an unprovoked criminal attack on an invitee by an unknown third party was foreseeable by the Moose Lodge. In discussing the foreseeability aspect of a business's duty to its invitees, the Kelly court cited with approval Radloff v. National Food Stores, Inc., 20 Wis.2d 224, 121 N.W.2d 865 (1963): Everyone can foresee the commission of a crime virtually anywhere and at any time. If foreseeability itself gave rise to duty to provide police protection for others, every residential curtilage, every shop, every store, every manufacturing plant would have to be patrolled by the private arms of the owner. Other jurisdictions have reached varied results in determining whether an unprovoked assault upon an invitee was foreseeable by the premises owner. The Michigan court, in holding that a restaurant owner was not liable for a criminal assault on its patrons, found that [c]riminal activity, by its deviant nature, is normally unforeseeable. Papadimas v. Mykonos Lounge, 176 Mich. App. 40, 439 N.W.2d 280, 283 (1989). The Papadimas court further found that although the risk of an unknown assailant might be more foreseeable in a high-crime area, it would not impose a higher standard of duty in those areas, stating that [a]lthough crime occurs more frequently in certain areas of our cities and particular portions of the state, we again decline to apply a higher standard of duty in such so-called high crime areas. Id. 439 N.W.2d at 283. In California, where the courts have found business owners liable for criminal acts upon their invitees, foreseeability with respect to the imposition of a duty is regarded as a mixed question of law and fact. Onciano v. Golden Palace Restaurant, 219 Cal. App.3d 385, 390, 268 Cal. Rptr. 96, 98 (Cal. App. 2 Dist. 1990). The Onciano court stated: in determining the existence of a landowner's duty to protect invitees from the wrongful conduct of third persons, foreseeability is measured by all of the circumstances including the nature, condition and location of the defendant's premises and defendant's prior experience, bearing in mind that what is required to be foreseeable is the general nature of the event or harm, not its precise manner or occurrence. 219 Cal. App.3d at 394, 268 Cal. Rptr. at 99 (emphasis added), citing Isaacs v. Huntington Memorial Hospital, 38 Cal.3d 112, 129, 211 Cal. Rptr. 356, 695 P.2d 653 (1985). Crain urges this Court to adopt the position taken by the California court in Isaacs and its progeny. In so arguing, Crain further asks this Court to abolish the prior similars rule and adopt the totality of the circumstances test, wherein criminal activity may be considered foreseeable and a business owner may be found liable even when no similar incidents have occurred on his premises. Isaacs, 211 Cal. Rptr. at 360-62, 695 P.2d at 657-659. The Isaacs court found that the prior similar incidents rule erroneously equates foreseeability of a particular act with previous occurrences of similar acts. Id. at 362, 695 P.2d at 659. It reiterated that `the fortuitous absence of prior injury does not justify relieving defendant from responsibility for the foreseeable consequences of its acts.' Id., quoting Weirum v. RKO General, Inc., 15 Cal.3d 40, 46, 123 Cal. Rptr. 468, 539 P.2d 36 (1975). Finally, the court found that the prior similar incidents rule improperly removed too many cases from the jury's consideration. Id. As persuasive as the Isaacs opinion may appear, the California courts seemingly have stretched the totality of the circumstances test to the level of strict liability where parking lots are involved. In Onciano, supra, a patron was assaulted and robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of a restaurant located in Los Angeles' Chinatown at about 12:30 a.m. The parking lot was surrounded by a chain link fence and well-lit. The parking lot attendant was not on duty at that hour of the night. Moreover, there was evidence that crime in Chinatown was minimal and that for more than six years prior to the assault, there had been no other reports of crime on the property. 219 Cal. App.3d at 389, 390, 268 Cal. Rptr. at 97, 99. In reversing the lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendant restaurant, the court found that the lack of such [prior similar] incidents does not by itself negate the element of foreseeability as a matter of law. Id. at 390, 268 Cal. Rptr. at 99. As one dissenting member of the court pointed out, the dicta of Isaacs which led to the reversal of those cases espousing the prior similar incidents rule has led to its own inequities. Id. at 392, 268 Cal. Rptr. at 101 (Woods, A.J., concurring in part, dissenting in part). In Sawyer v. Carter, 71 N.C. App. 556, 322 S.E.2d 813 (1984), the North Carolina court, while finding that evidence pertaining to the foreseeability of criminal attack shall not be limited to prior criminal acts occurring on the premises, affirmed the lower court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the owner of The Back Door, a convenience store. Id. 322 S.E.2d at 817. In that case, an acquaintance of the store manager was shot by robbers while tending to the front of the premises while the manager went to the back of the store. As in the case sub judice, the plaintiff relied extensively on evidence of similar crimes in the general vicinity rather than at the convenience store to support his claim that the attack was foreseeable. He presented evidence that fifty-five robberies had occurred in the area during the seven years prior to the incident complained of. A local convenience store owner, in his affidavit, stated that almost all small stores in the area which remained open after dark had been robbed at least once in the previous six years. The Back Door Store manager stated that he recalled only one robbery at the store, which had occurred some five years before the incident. The court found that this evidence was insufficient to establish a triable issue of fact on the question of reasonable foreseeability, stating: We doubt there exists a community in this State which is entirely crime-free. In the broadest sense, all crimes anywhere are foreseeable. To impose a blanket duty on all merchants to afford protection to their patrons would be a result not intended by our courts and not condoned by public policy. Discharging such a duty would undoubtedly be inconvenient and expensive, and to impose a duty absent true foreseeability of criminal activity in a particular store would be grossly unfair. Id. at 817. We refuse to place upon a business a burden approaching strict liability for all injuries occurring on its premises as a result of criminal acts by third parties. As we implied in Lyle, where an invitee is injured by acts of an unknown assailant we are not entirely limited to looking at the prior crimes which have occurred at the Moose Lodge, but rather we may look beyond the immediate premises to the surrounding neighborhood. While the amount and type of criminal activity in the general vicinity of the defendant's business premises is one factor that should be given consideration when determining foreseeability, merchants are not required to carry out the duties of the police force. Crime has become so prevalent in recent years that even without taking the financial burden into consideration it would be impossible for a business to guarantee the safety of everyone coming onto its premises. Crain's assertion that his injury was foreseeable is without merit. As Moose Lodge indicates, there had been only two reports of crime on the premises within the year prior to the assault on Crain. In February, 1984, burglars entered through the roof of the Lodge, and stole $643.00 from game machines. Later that year, in October, a tire and C.B. radio were stolen from a vehicle parked at the Lodge. These incidents, in and of themselves, hardly seem adequate to put Moose Lodge on notice that a serious assault upon an invitee was foreseeable. As to the incidence of crime in the vicinity of the Moose Lodge, the record indicates that in fifty-five of the sixty months prior to the attack on Crain there were numerous commercial burglaries and reports of larceny in the vicinity of the Moose Lodge, but there were only eleven assaults, robberies and other violent crimes in that five year period. Based on the scant evidence in the record it would be difficult to say the assault on Crain was foreseeable.