The Law

Security Can’t Stop All Criminals by Ron Davis Security measures in place at a Mississippi shopping center have allowed the owners of the facility to avoid blame for a crime-related personal injury suffered there. The shopping center is Metrocenter Mall in Jackson, and crime occurred in the center’s parking lot. The crime victim had gone alone in her car to the facility to have lunch with friends, and as she was leaving to return to work, she suspected that one of the car’s tires had gone flat. She stopped the car in another area of the parking lot and got out to examine her tires. In so doing, however, she left her car door ajar and the car engine running. In that brief moment, a stranger approached, and when she knelt to take a closer look at the tires on the passenger side, he jumped into the vehicle and started to drive away. She reacted by running around to the driver’s side of the car, reaching through the open window there, and attempting to remove the keys from the ignition. She was unsuccessful in that effort, and when the stranger was driving away, she clung to the door for a few brief moments but eventually fell to the pavement. As a result, she suffered minor injuries and incurred medical bills totaling $1,400. She sued the center’s owners, its managers and its security services. But records show that the center employs a variety of security procedures to prevent crime on the premises. When the carjacking occurred, for instance, seventy-two security cameras were in place to monitor the premises. Two uniformed security guards in golf cars regularly patrolled the parking lot. And local police regularly patrolled the center’s parking lots. But Metrocenter Mall is located in a crime-ridden area of Jackson. One security expert even submitted that an “atmosphere of violence” existed in the area surrounding and including the shopping center location. He even went so far as to conclude that the owners and managers significantly contributed to the carjacking victim’s injuries. But the Mississippi Supreme Court, in a previous similar lawsuit, determined that “it would be impossible for a business to guarantee the safety of everyone coming onto its premises. Moreover, the courts there have ruled that as a general principle, premises owners are not strictly liable for all injuries occurring on their premises as a result of criminal acts of third parties. Based on those determinations and rulings, the Supreme Court, in a split decision, ruled that “there was simply no evidence to show a causal link between the security in the Metrocenter Mall parking lot and the crime committed in this case at the hands of the third party. The injured woman did not show that but for the inadequate security of Metrocenter the carjacking would not have occurred…. The failure to establish proximate cause makes judgment in favor of Metrocenter appropriate in this case.” (Fenelon v. Jackson Metrocenter Mall, Ltd, 2012 WL 5915311 [Miss.App.]) Decision: November 2012 Published: November 2012