Court Opinion

ID: 9851217
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-09-24 05:09:08.439648+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:20:51.486215
License: Public Domain

Benham, Chief Justice.
In this case, which stems from the grant of certiorari to the Court of Appeals, we address whether a prior crime that was unreported and unknown to a property owner, but was reported to the police, was sufficient to give the property owner knowledge of a risk of criminal activity on its property so as to require it to take reasonable precautions to protect customers from similar risks. See Killebrew v. Sun Trust Banks, 216 Ga. App. 159, 160-161 (1) (453 SE2d 752) (1995). We conclude that knowledge of the risk of criminal activity is not created under the circumstances of this case, because the evidence in this case did not establish the existence of any duty on the property owner’s part to search police records for reports of criminal activity on its premises.
Appellee Stephen Killebrew was shot by a robber in Sun Trust Bank’s parking lot after using an automated teller machine (“ATM”) at night. Killebrew sued Sun Trust, alleging it failed to exercise ordinary care to keep its premises safe in light of a prior substantially similar criminal incident. Five months before the present incident, another customer using the same ATM at night was attacked in the parking lot by an assailant who threatened to hit the customer with a half-gallon liquor bottle. That incident was reported to the police but not to the bank. The bank’s security chief testified on deposition that it was the security department’s duty to investigate all crimes occurring on bank property.
The trial court’s grant of summary judgment to Sun Trust was reversed on appeal. The Court of Appeals acknowledged that a property owner may not be liable for the criminal act of a third party unless it has reasonable grounds for expecting that such a criminal act would occur. The Court of Appeals also recognized that Sun Trust did not have actual knowledge of the prior crime, but citing Savannah College of Art &c. v. Roe, 261 Ga. 764 (2) (409 SE2d 848) (1991), determined that the existence of a police report of the prior crime and the security chiefs testimony created an issue of fact concerning the bank’s constructive knowledge.
Assuming arguendo that constructive knowledge of a prior substantially similar criminal incident may be sufficient to impose on a property owner the duty to take reasonable precautions to protect visitors from a similar risk, the evidence in this case did not establish such knowledge. There is no authority in this State imposing a duty upon a property owner to investigate police files to determine whether criminal activities have occurred on its premises, and the testimony by the bank’s security chief did not establish that its duty to investigate crimes on its property encompassed seeking out police reports of *110incidents not reported to the bank. Thus, under these circumstances, the evidence did not create a genuine issue of material fact regarding whether appellant had reasonable grounds for expecting that such a criminal act would occur. The Court of Appeals erred in reversing the trial court’s grant of summary judgment on this ground.

Judgment reversed.

All the Justices concur.