Court Opinion

ID: 9385108
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-04-05 21:01:06.761595+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T17:17:58.899075
License: Public Domain

USCA4 Appeal: 22-1674      Doc: 36        Filed: 04/04/2023    Pg: 1 of 7

                                            UNPUBLISHED

                              UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS
                                  FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT

                                              No. 22-1674

        NORMA I. WINFFEL, Individually and as Personal Representative of the Estate of
        Malcolm Winffel; BRANDON WINFFEL; KAYLA WINFFEL; JULIA
        RODRIGUEZ; ALEJANDRO WINFFEL; CARL UNGER; VIRGINIA
        HENDERSON,

                            Plaintiffs - Appellants,

                     v.

        MONTGOMERY MALL OWNER, LLC; PROFESSIONAL SECURITY
        CONSULTANTS;   PROFESSIONAL SECURITY CONCEPTS, INC.;
        WESTFIELD PROPERTY MANAGEMENT, LLC;

                            Defendants - Appellees,

                     and

        WESTFIELD, LLC,

                            Defendant.

        Appeal from the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, at Greenbelt.
        Lydia Kay Griggsby, District Judge. (8:19-cv-00838-LKG)

        Argued: January 26, 2023                                        Decided: April 4, 2023

        Before NIEMEYER, RUSHING, and HEYTENS, Circuit Judges.
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        Affirmed by unpublished opinion. Judge Heytens wrote the opinion, in which Judge
        Niemeyer and Judge Rushing joined.

        ARGUED: Jack A. Gold, KARP, WIGODSKY, NORWIND, KUDEL & GOLD, P.A.,
        Rockville, Maryland, for Appellants. Brian Thomas Gallagher, COUNCIL, BARADEL,
        KOSMERL & NOLAN, P.A., Annapolis, Maryland; Heather Kathleen Bardot,
        MCGAVIN, BOYCE, BARDOT, THORSEN & KATZ, P.C., Fairfax, Virginia, for
        Appellees. ON BRIEF: Zachary William James King, Demosthenes Komis, KARP,
        WIGODSKY, NORWIND, KUDEL & GOLD, P.A., Rockville, Maryland, for Appellants.
        N. Tucker Meneely, COUNCIL, BARADEL, KOSMERL & NOLAN, P.A., Annapolis,
        Maryland, for Appellees Montgomery Mall Owner, LLC, and Westfield, LLC.

        Unpublished opinions are not binding precedent in this circuit.

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        TOBY HEYTENS, Circuit Judge:

               A man shot and killed his wife while she was picking up their children at a high

        school. The next day, he shot two strangers—Malcolm Winffel and Carl Unger—while

        attempting a carjacking in a mall parking lot about 14 miles away. Winffel died; Unger

        was seriously injured. The shooter fled the scene and killed another person before being

        apprehended. He is now serving a life sentence.

               Seeking compensation for their losses, Winffel’s estate, Winffel’s spouse, Unger,

        and Unger’s spouse sued the mall’s owners and a company that provided security services

        for the mall in federal district court. 1 The only basis for federal jurisdiction is diversity of

        citizenship, and all agree the case is governed by Maryland law. The complaint’s unifying

        allegation is that the mall’s owners and the security company failed to provide adequate

        security to keep patrons safe.

               Defendants moved for summary judgment on five grounds, including that they owed

        no legal duty to plaintiffs, they did not breach any duty they had, and any breach was not

        the proximate cause of the alleged injuries.

               The district court granted summary judgment for defendants. The court questioned

        plaintiffs’ assertion “that the defendants breached a duty of care by failing to identify [the

               1
                Plaintiffs also sued a company called Professional Security Concepts, Inc. But the
        only contract in the record is between one of the mall’s owners and defendant Professional
        Security Consultants, and plaintiffs have not challenged defendants’ assertion that
        Professional Security Concepts “had no contract with or connection to the mall at issue.”
        Mall Br. 3 n.2; see Oral Arg. 27:42–28:08. We thus affirm the district court’s grant of
        summary judgment for Professional Security Concepts on that basis.

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        shooter] as a threat to Mall patrons and by failing to deter [him] from entering the Mall on

        May 6, 2016.” JA 416. It also faulted plaintiffs for failing to provide any “indication of

        what th[e] standard of care would be” even “at this mature stage in this litigation.” JA 415.

        In the end, however, the district court rested its decision on the ground that “defendants did

        not owe a duty of care to” plaintiffs. JA 416. We review both the district court’s grant of

        summary judgment and its interpretation of state law de novo. See Colorado Bankers Life

        Ins. Co. v. Academy Fin. Assets, LLC, 60 F.4th 148, 151, 153 (4th Cir. 2023).

               We agree with the district court that plaintiffs failed to create a genuine dispute of

        material fact about whether the mall’s owners had a legal duty to protect them. As plaintiffs

        admit, the general rule in Maryland is that “there is no duty to protect a victim from the

        criminal acts of a third person.” Pls.’ Br. 26 (quoting Corinaldi v. Columbia Courtyard,

        Inc., 873 A.2d 483, 489 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2005)). And although Maryland courts have

        recognized three circumstances when “a landowner may be held liable when someone is

        injured by third party criminal activities on the premises,” Troxel v. Iguana Cantina, LLC,

        29 A.3d 1038, 1050 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2011), this case falls outside them.

               First, plaintiffs cannot establish a duty based on the mall owners’ “prior knowledge

        of similar criminal activity—evidenced by past events—occurring on the premises.”

        Troxel, 29 A.3d at 1050. Plaintiffs submitted no evidence of previous shootings or

        attempted carjackings at the mall. Rather, in opposing defendants’ summary judgment

        motion, plaintiffs presented evidence of—at most—two previous incidents of violence

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        during the three-year period before the shooting that gave rise to this case. 2 That is far

        fewer than those involved in plaintiffs’ self-described best case, which featured at least 12

        aggravated assaults, two robberies, a rape, two assaults on police officers, and “up to five

        fights per night on college nights” during a similar period. Troxel, 29 A.3d at 1051;

        see Oral Arg. 6:44–7:36. If two violent incidents at a large commercial shopping center

        over three years sufficed to flip the presumption that business owners have no duty to

        protect patrons against third-party criminal activity, the exception would quickly swallow

        the rule.

               Second, this is not a case when the property owner knew of “prior conduct of the

        assailant” that made the harm “foreseeable and preventable.” Corinaldi, 873 A.2d at 492.

        Until now, Maryland courts appear to have applied this doctrine only to assailants who had

        prior run-ins with a particular landowner rather than those—like the shooter here—who

        committed their previous crimes elsewhere. See id. (citing University of Maryland Eastern

        Shore v. Rhaney, 858 A.2d 497 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2004), which involved a student who

        attacked his roommate in a dorm room after committing assaults elsewhere on campus).

        And even if Maryland courts might extend the doctrine to cover a circumstance where a

        particular assailant was, for example, repeatedly attacking people in mall parking lots, that

               2
                 Before this Court, plaintiffs also cite an expert’s testimony that he had reviewed
        unspecified “historical data” referencing a rape at some point “over, I think, the last four
        or five years.” JA 351. Even assuming this portion of the expert’s testimony would be
        admissible, plaintiffs do not challenge defendants’ assertion that they never relied on it in
        opposing the defendants’ summary judgment motion. We thus decline to consider the
        testimony in our analysis. See, e.g., Bell v. Brockett, 922 F.3d 502, 513 (4th Cir. 2019).

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        is a far cry from what we have here. Instead, the only prior conduct of the assailant appeared

        to be a domestic crime 14 miles away from the mall. Any duty imposed under such a theory,

        therefore, would not be limited to the mall but would seemingly reach every business (and

        perhaps every landowner) throughout a large and densely populated area. We do not think

        the Maryland courts would take that step.

               Finally, this is not a time when a property owner “had knowledge of events

        occurring immediately before the actual criminal activity that made imminent harm

        foreseeable.” Troxel, 29 A.3d at 1050. In Corinaldi v. Columbia Courtyard, Inc., 873 A.2d

        483 (Md. Ct. Spec. App. 2005), for example, Maryland’s intermediate appellate court

        concluded this standard could be satisfied where a hotel employee learned someone had a

        gun at a large nighttime party at which people had been heard arguing. Id. at 494–95. Here,

        in contrast, the record reveals no evidence from which a reasonable factfinder could

        conclude a deadly attack against mall patrons was imminent.

               We also hold the district court correctly granted summary judgment to the security

        company. Plaintiffs insist Maryland’s highest court would adopt the doctrine set forth in

        Section 324A of the Restatement (Second) of Torts and, under that doctrine, the security

        company owed them a legal duty. For their part, defendants point to the absence of any

        Maryland statute or case law announcing such a rule and urge this Court not to “expand

        the law” in such a manner. Mall Br. 16.

               Whether (and if so when) to impose a legal duty on those who contract to provide

        security services is a matter with significant policy implications, and any prediction we

        offered could be superseded at any time by the Maryland courts. But we need not resolve

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        that duty issue to resolve this case in favor of the security company because “we may affirm

        on any grounds apparent from the record.” Pitt Cnty. v. Hotels.com, L.P., 553 F.3d 308,

        311 (4th Cir. 2009) (alterations and quotation marks omitted). We thus hold the district

        court correctly granted summary judgment to the security company because plaintiffs

        failed to create a genuine dispute of material fact about whether any breach of duty was the

        proximate cause of the harms for which they seek relief.

                Plaintiffs assert the security company was short-staffed on the morning of the

        shooting and had not patrolled the relevant parking lot during the two hours before the

        shooter’s attack. Having reviewed the record, however, we see no evidence that extra staff

        or more frequent patrols would have prevented the shooting. See Pittway Corp. v. Collins,

        973 A.2d 771, 786 (Md. 2009) (“[N]egligence is not actionable unless it is a proximate

        cause of the harm alleged.”). Nor—even “at this mature stage in this litigation,” JA 415—

        have plaintiffs identified any other concrete, reasonable actions that would have prevented

        the shooting. Plaintiffs’ silence on this point is all the more telling given that there was an

        armed police officer sitting in a marked patrol car about 50 yards from the scene of the

        shooting, whose presence neither deterred the shooter nor prevented him from escaping on

        foot.

                                               *      *       *

                What happened at the mall was undeniably tragic. Because we see no reason to

        believe Maryland’s highest court would impose tort liability here, however, the judgment

        of the district court is

                                                                                         AFFIRMED.

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