Court Opinion

ID: 9562295
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-21 18:25:50.047858+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T09:17:17.226240
License: Public Domain

McMurray, Presiding Judge,
dissenting.
I am compelled to dissent as the majority focuses upon proximate cause (an issue which was properly before the jury at trial) rather *815than articulating an answer to the only question raised by the Sailorses in their first enumeration of error, i.e., whether the trial court erred in excluding evidence relevant to the adequacy of security provided by Esmail at its 153-room hotel. To this extent, I believe the trial court erroneously excluded a laundry list of prior criminal acts at Esmail’s place of business, including an armed robbery of a hotel desk clerk, fights in the hotel lobby and lounge, public drunkenness by a person in the hotel parking lot, disorderly conduct and public drunkenness by a person at the hotel’s front desk, and the murder of a hotel desk clerk, the proprietor’s own son.
The proper standard for evaluating whether a prior criminal act is “substantially similar” was recently resolved by a majority of this Court in Matt v. Days Inns of America, 212 Ga. App. 792 (443 SE2d 290), affirmed at 265 Ga. 235 (454 SE2d 507), where Presiding Judge Birdsong restated that “ ‘[a]ll that is required is that the prior (incident) be sufficient to attract the (hotel’s) attention to the dangerous condition which resulted in the litigated (incident).’ Pembrook Mgmt. v. Cossaboon, 157 Ga. App. 675, 677 (278 SE2d 100).” Id. at 794, supra (Pope, C. J., McMurray, P. J., Beasley, P. J., Cooper and Smith, JJ., concurring; with Andrews, Johnson and Blackburn, JJ., dissenting). Accordingly, the trial court in the case sub judice was correct in determining the controlling issue to be whether the prior criminal incidents proffered by plaintiffs were substantially similar to the assault during which Rick Sailors was injured. However, it is my view that the trial court erred in determining that most of the prior violent criminal acts offered into evidence by plaintiffs were not “substantially similar” to the incident involving Rick Sailors because these prior incidents were not committed in the precise manner or location as the assault upon Rick Sailors. “In this sense, substantially similar does not mean identical, and it is not a question whether a weapon was used, but whether the prior crimes should have put an ordinarily prudent person on notice that the hotel’s guests were facing increased risks. ‘All that is required is that the prior [incidents] be sufficient to attract [Esmail’s] attention to the dangerous condition which resulted in the litigated (incident).’ Pembrook Mgmt. u. Cossaboon, 157 Ga. App. 675, 677[, supra].” Matt v. Days Inns of America, 212 Ga. App. 792, 794, supra. In other words, the test is whether the prior criminal activity was “sufficiently substantially similar” to demonstrate Es-mail’s knowledge that conditions on its property subjected invitees to unreasonable risk of criminal attack so that Esmail had reasonable grounds to apprehend that the present criminal act was foreseeable. Id. at 795.
In the case sub judice, the trial court excluded evidence of about 75 separate criminal incidents at Esmail’s hotel during a 44-month period preceding the assault upon Rick Sailors, over 18 of which in*816volved violence or the threat of violence. It is my view, that this volume of prior criminal activity (involving both violent and non-violent acts) was not only relevant to show that Esmail knew or should have known that its patrons were at risk of violent criminal assault, but was also relevant to show the inadequacy of security (one guard stationed in T-Bird’s lounge) provided at Esmail’s place of business. Compare Ritz Carlton Hotel Co. v. Revel, 216 Ga App. 300, 302 (1), 303 (2) (454 SE2d 183), involving unrelated prior criminal incidents which were never pulled together to show a pattern of violent criminal activity on the defendant’s business premises.
Decided July 13, 1995
McKenney & Froelich, William J. McKenney, for appellants.
Gorby & Reeves, Michael J. Gorby, Martha D. Turner, for appellee.