Court Opinion

ID: 9565291
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 19:18:32.015022+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:19:31.778247
License: Public Domain

Beasley, Judge,
concurring specially.
I concur but wish to describe the evidence which plaintiff presented of prior crimes which he says put the motel operator on notice and thus imposed a duty to protect the plaintiff guest.
There is evidence that the attack and robbery occurred about 12:15 a. m. on January 5, 1984, when plaintiff was drinking a cup of coffee while standing at the fence surrounding the pool. He had left his room for some fresh air and was attacked by two men who emerged from the bushes. The pool was at the rear of the motel prem*122ises. The security guards were in the front office at the time.
Decided May 28, 1987.
James D. McGuire, Mark Harper, for appellant.
Glenn S. Bass, Stephen L. Goldner, for appellee.
The evidence submitted to show that the operator had such knowledge that it should have anticipated criminal acts was a sheaf of police reports of twenty-five previous crimes on the motel’s premises. All but one were in 1980, 1981, and 1982. The one on November 26, 1984, just more than a month preceding plaintiff’s experience, was an alleged larceny of $100 from an envelope which a guest had deposited in the motel safe deposit box at the front desk.
Among the others there were two stolen autos, three thefts of personal items from vehicles, one burglary and one other theft from the restaurant and kitchen when unoccupied, six incidents in which televisions were stolen from guest rooms, five room burglaries where guests’ personal belongings were taken, two thefts from the motel office, larceny of twelve fire extinguishers from twelve different locations on the premises, one incident which cannot be deciphered from even the original evidence, and what appears to be two armed robberies in the front office. The latter two, which are the only two involving personal confrontation, occurred in November 1982.
All of these crimes share with the current incident the factors of nighttime occurrence and the perpetrators’ goal of obtaining personal property. However, the incidents are too remote in time to cast on defendant a reasonable apprehension of a criminal act on a guest in January 1984. In addition, all of them except the theft of fire extinguishers involved crimes from locked places, such as rooms and vehicles, or were in the lobby, where the security guards were on this occasion. None involved an attack on a patron out in the open, nor an attack on a patron’s person in the first place.
Thus this case differs from the leading case of Lay v. Munford, Inc., 235 Ga. 340 (219 SE2d 416) (1975), because as a matter of law the evidence offered to prove reasonable foreseeability is irrelevant. Without it, defendant could not be charged with the duty of anticipating a crime against plaintiff. Cf. Washington Rd. Properties v. Stark, 178 Ga. App. 180 (342 SE2d 327) (1986).