Court Opinion

ID: 9755323
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-28 20:34:59.048473+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T07:28:06.282731
License: Public Domain

STEPHEN N. LIMBAUGH, JR., Chief Justice,
dissenting.
I respectfully dissent.
I.
With regard to the claims against Ward Parkway, the owner of the premises, I disagree with the majority’s indiscriminate reliance on crimes of all categories in determining the existence of a duty to protect. I am particularly concerned that, as a practical matter, the majority’s applica*264tion of the violent crimes exception, which by definition should be applied only under extraordinary circumstances, swallows up the general rule that “there is no duty to protect business invitees from the criminal acts of unknown third persons,” Madden v. C & K Barbecue Carryout, Inc., 758 S.W.2d 59, 61 (Mo. banc 1988).
The violent crimes exception to the general rule of non-liability requires that there must be “evidence of prior criminal incidents sufficient to alert management to the possibility that his patrons might be in danger.” Id. at 62 (citing Virginia D. v. Madesco Investment Corp., 648 S.W.2d 881 (Mo. banc 1983)). The number, time of occurrence, and similarity of criminal incidents are the principal factors that give rise to foreseeability and, in turn, the duty to protect. Hudson v. Riverport Performance Arts Ctr., 37 S.W.3d 261, 264-65 (Mo.App.2000); Wood v. Centermark Props., Inc., 984 S.W.2d 517, 524 (Mo.App. 1998); Faheen, By and Through Hebron v. City Parking Corp., 734 S.W.2d 270, 274 (Mo.App.1987). However, in its review of prior criminal incidents, the majority relies almost totally on incidents that are significantly dissimilar to the incident in this case — the violent abduction and rape of a young woman.
A close look at the majority’s chart of prior criminal activity proves the point. Of the seventeen crimes listed, eleven occurred in the parking lot,1 rather than inside the mall where the crime in question occurred. Obviously, in mall parking lots, persons are more exposed to crime because they may be easily isolated and a quick escape by an attacker is readily available. On the other hand, inside the mall, there are many employees and customers who may come to the aid of a victim and whose very presence serves to dissuade potential attackers. Thus, an important distinction may be made between crime in the parking lot and crime in the mall. See Wood v. Centermark Props., 984 S.W.2d at 524; Pickle v. Denny’s Restaurant, Inc., 763 S.W.2d 678, 681 (Mo.App. 1988) (excluding from consideration crimes that occurred indoors where the crime in question occurred outdoors). Indeed, the majority’s own statistical analysis of the location of the crimes bears this out.2
Of the six remaining crimes from the list of seventeen, none is remotely similar to the kind of criminal offense present here. One incident involved a man who had fallen asleep drunk at a mall restaurant and who attacked a bartender and a security officer with a knife when the bartender attempted to wake him. Another incident concerned a teenager who “was molested by a stranger in the mall movie theater,” but the record indicates that the incident is more properly characterized as a misdemeanor-level offensive touching. The chart also mentions that a “mall employee was robbed in the mall of his wallet at knifepoint.” This incident occurred after midnight, after the mall was closed, and the employee-victim was one of the janitors. The chart’s entry of 8-11-95, that “a woman entering the mall was assaulted by three women who kicked and punched her,” actually involved three female teen*265agers who assaulted a fourth teenager entering the arcade from the parking lot late one Friday night after the mall shops closed. The majority’s chart also contains the entry of 4-15-96 that a mall restaurant employee committed a sexual assault on a fellow employee in the mall bathroom. Suffice it to say that mall employees are not “unknown assailants” as required by the violent crimes exception. Finally, the most grievous incident is that “an employee of a mall restaurant held the store manager at knife point, forcing her to open the safe and then abducting her.” Again, co-employees are not “unknown assailants.” In sum, not one of these incidents, nor any of them together, are sufficient to alert management to the possibility that a mall patron might be in danger of a violent abduction and rape.
The majority also suggests that the fist of seventeen is merely representative of many other reports of violent crimes at the mall. I agree! Just as with the list of seventeen, none of the other incidents were significantly similar to that involving plaintiff. A review of the remaining reports reveals that, with a single exception, all incidents of violent crimes can be categorized as either parking lot crimes, robberies of mall stores and other assaults of store employees (usually by disgruntled customers), and consensual fights among teenagers. The single exception, which alone is insufficient to impose a duty on the mall owner, involved an unarmed man who robbed an elderly woman near the mall entrance.
This is not a case like Madden, the case on which the majority primarily relies. Although Madden also involved an abduction of a business patron, the abduction occurred on a small restaurant parking lot, and the duty to protect restaurant patrons was based on a recent history of six armed robberies and six strong-armed robberies of patrons on the same parking lot. Madden v. C & K Barbecue Carryout, Inc., 758 S.W.2d at 60.
Tellingly, the majority fails to cite Wood v. Centermark Properties, Inc., 984 S.W.2d 517 (Mo.App.1998), the only case to address the liability of mall owners for violent crimes committed against mall patrons and employees. In Wood, the court refused to impose liability on the mall owner even for a parking lot abduction. Plaintiff had identified eighty incidents of violent crimes occurring both inside and outside the mall, but, after an initial review, the court culled the bulk of the crimes from the list. Id. at 524. “After excluding all of the incidents off the premises and inside the mall and all incidents of indecent exposure and injuries resulting from escaping shoplifters, there remained] about 20 incidents of allegedly violent crimes.... ” Id. These included several fights among mall patrons, five purse snatehings, two strong-armed robberies, and a “robbery holdup where a small hard object was placed in the victim’s back as she was robbed,” id. at 524-25, but none of the victims were severely injured, and the only items stolen were purses, bags, or jewelry, id. at 525. Ultimately, the court held that the violent crimes in question were too dissimilar to put the mall owners on notice that mall patrons would be at risk of being abducted in the parking lot.
The inescapable conclusion to be drawn from Wood is that if the prior criminal activity in that case was too dissimilar to give rise to a duty to protect mall patrons from being abducted from the mall parking lot, then certainly the prior criminal activity in the case at hand was too dissimilar to give rise to a duty to protect mall patrons from abduction inside the mall itself. Accordingly, I would not impose liability on Ward Parkway.
*266II.
Regarding the claims against IPC, the security company, I disagree with the majority on both grounds: 1) that IPC is liable to plaintiff because plaintiff is a third-party beneficiary of the security agreement and 2) that IPC is liable .to plaintiff because the security agreement establishes that IPC has a duty in tort to protect plaintiff.
The simple answer on the first claim is that plaintiff cannot be a third-party beneficiary if it is determined in the first instance, as I would hold, that Ward Parkway, the mall owner, had no duty to protect plaintiff. Under the majority’s analysis, plaintiff is a “creditor beneficiary” because the performance of IPC’s promise to provide security for the mall “will satisfy an actual or supposed or asserted duty that the mall owners owed to plaintiff.” Absent that duty, however, there can be no creditor beneficiary.
The claim that the security contract imposes a duty on IPC is directly contrary to the long-established precedent of this Court that a party not privy to a contract may not use the duties created thereunder as a basis for tort. Roddy v. Mo. Pac. Ry. Co., 104 Mo. 234, 15 S.W. 1112 (1891). The majority relies upon an exception discussed in dicta in Wolfmeyer v. Otis Elevator Co., 262 S.W.2d 18, 22 (Mo.1953), that “a defendant, by entering into a contract, may place himself in such a relation toward third persons as to impose upon him an obligation to act in such a way that they will not be injured.” In Westerhold v. Carroll, 419 S.W.2d 73, 77-79 (Mo.1967), however, this Court clarified its comments in Wolfmeyer by holding that the exception to privity that allows a third party to sue in tort for breach of the contract is very limited and narrow and applies only in cases where the relationship between the third party and the contracting party was so close “as to approach that of privity.” Id. at 78. The Court also emphasized that where the purpose of the privity requirement is to prevent exposing the parties to “unlimited liability to an unlimited number of persons,” the general rule should remain in effect. Id. In this case, there certainly is no relationship between plaintiff and IPC so close “as to approach that of privity,” and to disregard the privity requirement would indeed subject the security company to unlimited liability to an unlimited number of persons — the many thousands of patrons and employees of the mall — which is exactly what Wester-hold forbids.
Finally, the majority holds that IPC’s duty to act arose when plaintiffs friend, A.G., informed two IPC officers of the abduction. The majority’s reasoning is that the situation fits into the “first special facts and circumstances” exception where “a person, known to be violent, is present on the premises or an individual is present who has conducted himself so as to indicate danger and sufficient time exists to prevent injury.” Faheen, By and Through Hebron v. City Parking Corp., 734 S.W.2d at 273. First, this argument is not raised by the plaintiff at any point. Second, the exception to which the majority refers is inapposite. It applies only where a person is previously known to be dangerous, based upon that person’s “character, past conduct and tendencies.” Scheibel v. Hillis, 531 S.W.2d 285, 288 (Mo. banc 1976).
III.
For these reasons, I would affirm the judgments entered by the circuit court.

. Ten of the eleven are expressly designated in the chart as having occurred in the parking lot. The first entry — an assault on 3-13-97— also occurred in the parking lot, but the entry was not designated as such.

. The majority's footnoted response to the fact that parking lot crimes are dissimilar is to emphasize that although the abduction occurred inside the mall, the rape occurred on a catwalk outside the mall. However, the record shows that the catwalk is a secluded, narrow, employees-only walkway abutting the mall building proper and accessible to mall patrons only through emergency exit doors. This was simply not a parking lot crime.