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.
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