Court Opinion

ID: 9615307
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 04:34:00.063266+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:03:45.050353
License: Public Domain

Hunstein, Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent to the majority’s opinion because it is inconsistent both legally and factually from the approach this Court has previously set forth as applicable in premises liability cases. In Sturbridge Partners, Ltd. v. Walker, 267 Ga. 785 (482 SE2d 339) (1997) a majority of this Court rejected the “restrictive and inflexible” “substantially similar” standard and stressed that in determining reasonable foreseeability, facts such as “the location, nature and *607extent of the prior criminal activities and their likeness, proximity or other relationship to the crime in question” must be given due consideration. Id. at 786. While the majority gives lip service to the holding in Sturbridge, it nevertheless proceeds to usurp the jury’s role by resolving contested factual conflicts against appellant in order to achieve the result it desires, a return to the “restrictive and inflexible” standard of the “substantially similar” prior criminal act which this Court rejected in Sturbridge. It little matters that the majority quotes Sturbridge at length where its application of premises liability principles to the facts of this case undeniably establishes that its holding is consistent only with those cases Sturbridge overruled.
The majority states that under the facts in this case there was only a “potential” for a patron like Doe to confront a thief, a “possibility” that the isolation of any encounter would be brief, with a tenant “generally’ having opportunities to escape. Majority opinion, p. 606.1 agree that appellant does not have a strong case. But mere recognition of the weakness of appellant’s case does not entitle the majority to play factfinder and enter summary adjudication for appellees in a case where the evidence does not, with plain and palpable facts, establish the absence of evidence to support the nonmoving party’s case. Lau’s Corp. v. Haskins, 261 Ga. 491 (405 SE2d 474) (1991). Appellant here adduced evidence that in the 11 months before the assault on her in December 1991, there were over 15 incidents of theft from vehicles in appellees’ parking lots and numerous instances of vandalism; in the month of the assault itself, two bicycles and a white water kayak were stolen from the lots. Appellant adduced evidence that appellees were aware that criminal activity in the parking lots was pervasive and was not limited to petty larcenies, but also included thefts of conspicuous and bulky items, thus presenting a foreseeable risk of confrontation with and assault on patrons who encountered these thieves. A jury question consequently was presented whether appellees’ knowledge of this widespread and flagrant criminal activity in the parking lots was “sufficient to attract [appellees’] attention to the dangerous condition which resulted in [the assault on appellant].” (Citation and punctuation omitted.) Majority opinion, p. 605.
It little benefits the bench, bar and public for this Court to state a rule in one case then inexplicably retreat from that rule the very next time the issue appears. Here, eight months after this Court held in Sturbridge that a jury, not the appellate courts, should resolve the question of reasonable foreseeability, a majority of this Court substitutes itself as the finder of fact to hold that appellees’ knowledge of pervasive property-related criminal activity “cannot establish the foreseeability” of the assault on appellant. In Sturbridge we rejected this inflexible approach over Chief Justice Benham’s lament that our *608holding constituted “an unfortunate jettisoning of precedent.” Id. at 788 (Benham, C. J., dissenting). It appears now that this Court’s effort in Sturbridge to “square [premises liability cases] with common sense or tort law” was itself nothing more than an aberration and that it is Sturbridge that is now being jettisoned by the majority. Because I would apply Sturbridge to this case and hold that a jury question exists whether the criminal attack on appellant was reasonably foreseeable, I must respectfully dissent to the affirmance of the Court of Appeals’ opinion.
Decided November 3, 1997.
Sutherland, Asbill & Brennan, William D. Barwiek, William S. Wright, Patricia A. Gorham, for appellant.
Long, Weinberg, Ansley & Wheeler, J. Kenneth Moorman, Kathryn S. Whitlock, John C. Bonnie, for appellees.
Bauer & Deitch, Gilbert H. Deitch, amicus curiae.