Court Opinion

ID: 9576346
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 21:23:33.096898+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T13:05:52.583454
License: Public Domain

ANDREWS, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
The salient facts in this appeal are, first, that a tenant was attacked by two men in the hallway outside her apartment (and then forced into that apartment), and second, that no violent attack had previously taken place on the premises. Our Supreme Court has held that property crimes previously committed in a common area do not put a landlord on notice that a violent assault is likely to occur in that area, and that summary judgment for the defendant is therefore appropriate concerning the violent assault. Doe v. Prudential-Bache/A.G. Spanos Realty Partners, 268 Ga. 604, 606 (492 SE2d 865) (1997). It follows that the trial court did not err when it granted summary judgment to the property owner and the security company in this case. I therefore dissent.
We laid out the controlling legal authority in this case when we reversed the denial of summary judgment to Agnes Scott College in a case involving the abduction and subsequent rape of a student:
Although a landowner has a duty to invitees to exercise ordinary care to keep its premises safe (see OCGA § 51-3-1), the landowner is not an insurer of an invitee’s safety. An intervening criminal act by a third party generally insulates a landowner from liability unless such criminal act was reasonably foreseeable.
(Citation omitted.) Agnes Scott College v. Clark, 273 Ga. App. 619, 621 (616 SE2d 468) (2005).
In order for the crime at issue to be foreseeable, it must be substantially similar to previous criminal activities occurring on or near the premises such that a reasonable person would take ordinary precautions to protect invitees from the risk posed by the criminal activity.
(Emphasis supplied.) Id., citing Sturbridge Partners v. Walker, 267 Ga. 785, 786 (482 SE2d 339) (1997). More specifically, and as our *717Supreme Court held in Sturbridge Partners;
In determining whether previous criminal acts are substantially similar to the occurrence causing harm, thereby establishing the foreseeability of risk, the court must inquire into the location, nature and extent of the prior criminal activities and their likeness, proximity or other relationship to the crime in question. While the prior criminal activity must be substantially similar to the particular crime in question, that does not mean identical. What is required is that the prior incident be sufficient to attract the [landowner’s] attention to the dangerous condition which resulted in the litigated incident.
(Citations and punctuation omitted.) 267 Ga. at 786.
Applying this standard, the Supreme Court of Georgia has held that a landlord was entitled to summary judgment on the claim of a victim who was attacked in a parking garage and raped nearby, because the crime was unforeseeable as a matter of law. Doe, supra at 606, affirming Doe v. Prudential-Bache/A.G. Spanos Realty Partners, 222 Ga. App. 169 (474 SE2d 31) (1996). The Supreme Court held that the prior property crimes were “insufficient to create a factual issue regarding whether [the landlord] could reasonably anticipate that a violent sexual assault might occur on the premises.” (Emphasis supplied.) This was so for three reasons: because the thefts and vandalism in Doe “[did] not suggest that personal injury [might] occur”; because the parking garage was “a common area, used by all the tenants and their guests,” such that “there [was] only the potential for a tenant to confront a thief in an isolated situation”; and because “a tenant generally will have opportunities for escaping an isolated encounter with a thief in a common area, but will not have similar opportunities when encountering a burglar in her apartment.” (Punctuation omitted; emphasis supplied.) Doe, supra, 268 Ga. at 606.
Here, it is undisputed that Walker was attacked in the hallway outside her apartment — a “common area,” used by “tenants and their guests.” Doe, 268 Ga. at 606. And it is also undisputed that no violent attacks had been reported in the complex’s common areas, let alone inside an apartment. The facts that faulty security may have permitted other people to have gained entrance to the complex in the past, and that such people had committed property crimes, do not mean that Walker’s robbery and rape were foreseeable. On the contrary, a property owner faced only with property crimes that “did not involve person-to-person violence or contact” could not reasonably have foreseen this attack. Agnes Scott, 273 Ga. App. at 622, *718citing Doe, 268 Ga. at 606. Nor is there evidence of break-ins to occupied apartments of the kind that made a violent attack foreseeable in Sturbridge Partners. See Walker v. Sturbridge Partners, 221 Ga. App. 36 (470 SE2d 738) (1996) (rapist and fellow resident gained entry through same kitchen window that the victim had previously reported as having a broken lock).
Decided March 25, 2010
Reconsiderations denied April 14, 2010
Robert Kenner, Jr., for appellant.
Fowler, Hein, Cheatwood & Williams, Robert P. Hein, Hawkins & Parnell, Christopher S. Keith, Shapiro, Fussell, Wedge & Martin, Robert B. Wedge, Jason A. Cooper, for appellees.
For these reasons, I respectfully dissent.