Skip to main content

Recent Case Developments: Dave & Buster’s Held Not Liable For Stabbing of Customer


When you operate a restaurant or a bar, etc., sometimes customers get attacked by other customers/patrons--for whatever reason. So when can the restaurant be held liable in situations like that?

In what is a horrible story, in 2010, an 8-year-old boy was at a Dave & Buster’s with his family at The Source Mall in Westbury. The boy was playing a game when he was suddenly attacked and stabbed 5 times in the back by a 23-year-old man who testified in the case that he went there to stab someone. 

[The man plead guilty to attempted murder and was sentenced to 14 years in prison.]

The boy (through his parents) sued the attacker (who has no money, I assume), Dave & Buster’s, and the Mall. The boy alleged Dave & Buster’s failed to provide adequate security, which would have prevented the attack.

Dave & Buster’s got the case dismissed against them at the trial court level, and the boy appealed. In a recent decision, the Second Department affirmed that Dave & Buster's was not liable for the attack.

The reason? Restaurants, bars, etc. are only held liable for such attacks if they were on sufficient “notice” of suspicious behavior/circumstances leading up to the attack--that is, if such an attack was "foreseeable". The law doesn’t hold them liable for sudden, unforeseen events.

The court said:
[Dave & Buster’s] had a duty to take minimal security precautions to protect members of the public from reasonably foreseeable criminal acts by third parties … Here, [Dave & Buster’s] established their prima facie entitlement to judgment as a matter of law by showing that the criminal assault of the plaintiff was not foreseeable.

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Being Fired for Things an Employee Did On Their Own Time, Outside of Work: Legal or Not?

New York is an "at will" employment state, meaning that, in the absence of a contract, you can be fired at any time, for any reason, or for no reason at all, unless the reason is based on something like age, race, religion, disability, etc. (just a handful of categories). (Government employees have more protections than private-sector employees, such as First Amendment protections.) One of the few exceptions to the at-will employment rule is New York Labor Law §201-d. The statute is lengthy and has lots of caveats and qualifiers and defenses (for the employer). But the gist of § 201-d is that an employee can't be disciplined or fired (or not hired) for something they do on their own time, away from work, that is legal, and that is not against the employer's interests.  The statute and the reported cases mostly deal with "recreational" and "political" activities, and the cases can turn on whether something was a "recreational activity...
Post a Comment
Read more

Insurance Companies Trying to Gag Superstorm Sandy Victims?

As reported in several news articles ( this one  is free), in the aftermath of superstorm Sandy, engineering firms were hired by insurance companies to inspect the homes of people making claims for flood damage.  There have been allegations that two of the engineering firms, U.S. Forensic out of Louisiana, and GEB HiRise out of Uniondale, forged property damage reports in order to deny claims. The NY State Attorney General is investigating those allegations and wants to talk to the homeowners.  At the same time, there are about 1,800 lawsuits in federal court involving the insurance coverage claims. A three-judge panel is trying to expedite resolution of the cases.  Last week it was revealed that one of the insurance companies, The Standard Fire Insurance Company, which is a subsidiary of Travelers Insurance, drafted language in a settlement document saying that any homeowner who accepts a payout of their claims cannot cooperate with the criminal invest...
Post a Comment
Read more

Recent Case Developments: Contractor Entitled to be Paid For Extra Work Not Part of Original Contract

On September 12, 2013, the Town of Kent (Putnam County) entered into a contract with a contractor to build a sewer.  During construction, certain "conditions that were unexpected and unanticipated" arose, requiring the contractor to do "extra" work--things beyond the scope of work of the original contract. (The appeals court doesn't detail what this extra work was.) The contractor performed the extra work, totaling around $380,000 in additional costs. For reasons not stated by the appeals court, the Town refused to pay for this extra work, and the contractor eventually sued the Town in May, 2015.  The contractor moved for summary judgment in the lower court (a kind of mini-trial on paper), and the court awarded judgment in favor of the contractor for the $380,000.  The Town appealed, but the appeals court sided with the contractor, saying that even though this "extra" work was not within the scope of work of the original contract, the con...
Post a Comment
Read more