affirming directed verdict based on fact that evidence of a "criminally active environment" is insufficient to prove the foreseeability of drug store employee's murder in the store's parking lot when there was no evidence that the defendant's employees or customers were at a greater risk than any other urban neighborhood dwellers
How later courts described this case
- affirming directed verdict based on fact that evidence of a "criminally active environment" is insufficient to prove the foreseeability of drug store employee's murder in the store's parking lot when there was no evidence that the defendant's employees or customers were at a greater risk than any other urban neighborhood dwellers
- finding that drug store owed no duty of care to employee murdered while leaving the store at closing time
- noting that “[ijmplicit in Doe’s holding was the notion that particular care is required by school officials when the safety of young children is involved”
- "For example, only one offense, a robbery at a nearby Giant supermarket, involved a firearm and no homicides had been reported." (emphasis added)
Written by the judges who cited it.
The opinion
SCHWELB, Associate Judge,
concurring in the result:
I concur in the affirmance of the judgment, but on a different ground. Mrs. Clement faded, in my view, to show by expert testimony either that Peoples had violated the applicable standard of care or that any alleged violation was the proximate cause of her husband’s murder.
The principal theory espoused by Dr. Bopp, Mrs. Clement’s expert witness, was that Peoples should have conducted an “armed sweep” of the parking lot at closing time. Dr. Bopp opined that the security guard, on seeing the red Jaguar, would have been obliged to call the police. These steps, *430 according to Dr. Bopp, would have saved Mr. Clement’s life. Dr. Bopp did not, however, establish that his personal opinion coincided with the national (or indeed local) standard of care. In fact, he did not assert that a single store in the country had ever adopted such a procedure. His testimony was therefore insufficient as a matter of law to establish the standard of care. Toy v. District of Colum bia, 549 A.2d 1, 7-8 (D.C.1998).
Mrs. Clement also claimed that Peoples violated the standard of care by failing to provide proper lights outside the store. Even if the testimony and exhibits proffered in support of this theory had been admitted, however, there was no showing, nor could there be, that this alleged breach of duty “ha[d] a substantial and direct causal link” to [Mr. Clement’s] murder. See District of Columbia v. Freeman, 477 A.2d 713, 716 (D.C.1984). Indeed, I do not discern any basis for concluding that there was any causal link whatever between the fighting and the death of the plaintiffs husband.
Mrs. Clement did not come close to showing that the tragedy was Peoples’ fault, or that an impartial jury could reasonably find that it was. I would therefore affirm the judgment for the foregoing reasons without reaching the rather perplexing (to me) issue of “foreseeability.”