Negligent security premises liability appeals are pending at the New York Court of Appeals. As discussed in my two prior posts here and here, the Appellate Division, Second Department case – Scurry v New York City Hous. Auth. – challenged one line of caselaw in the First Department on targeted attacks of tenants on a landlord’s property.
Notably, the Second Department called out the First Department on their intervening act proximate cause analysis – i.e., the perpetrator’s targeted attack on a tenant is extraordinary and unforeseeable, breaking the causal connection between the landlord’s breach of the duty to take minimal security precautions to protect its tenants and the tenant’s injuries.
The First Department clapped back at the Second Department in Estate of Murphy, v New York City Hous. Auth., rejecting the Scurry Court’s implication that the First Department’s jurisprudence holds that the fact that a victim was targeted obviates the need for any inquiry into the security measures in place at the subject premises. The First Department stated, in response to the Scurry Court,
“Indeed, we are aware of no case in the First Department that suggests that a landowner would avoid liability even if minimal precautions would have actually prevented a determined assailant from gaining access. In reality, however, that is hardly ever the case.”
In Estate of Murphy, the plaintiff’s daughter was the victim of a dispute between two gangs. Without getting too deep into the facts, I will note that the daughter and her friends were fleeing members of an opposing gang. The daughter and her friends entered the side door of the apartment building where she lived and ran to the fourth floor. The side door was not intended for entry into the building. There was evidence that the door's lock was frequently broken and tenants used it to enter the building. The perpetrators entered the same unlocked side door and, after a brief confrontation on the fourth floor, the perpetrators shot and killed the daughter.
The plaintiff commenced a civil lawsuit against the perpetrators and the owner of the apartment building. She alleged that the defendant New York City Housing Authority was negligent in failing to have properly functioning locks at the premises, failing to properly monitor surveillance equipment, and failing to provide adequate security. NYCHA moved for summary judgment, relying on the evidence submitted by the People of the State of New York at the criminal trial of one of the perpetrators. The People elicited the testimony of several of the people who had been involved in the fighting. The People argued to the jury that the perpetrators killed the daughter/victim in an act of vengeance.
The First Department affirmed the trial court’s grant of summary judgment to NYCHA based on the evidence showing that the perpetrators were intent on gaining access to the building. The Court relied on evidence demonstrating that the perpetrators focus on gaining entry to the building, no matter what the consequences were – e.g., text messages indicating the perpetrators were bent on revenge and the fact that they entered the building in plain site of several people and surveillance cameras, without attempting to shield their faces.
Notably, the First Department relied on an inference as part of its reasoning on the intervening cause analysis. The Court stated, “[C]onsidering that at least one other person, by all appearances oblivious to the brouhaha between the two groups, entered the building at the same time, it does not take a leap of the imagination to surmise that [the perpetrators] would have gained access to the building by following another person in or forcing such a person to let them in.” Based on the foregoing reasoning, the Court concluded that all the factors negated the unlocked side door as a proximate cause of the harm to the plaintiff’s daughter. Further, the Court concluded that the perpetrators “murderous intent” was the only proximate cause of the daughter’s death.
All of these tort concepts are well settled. Thus, the Court of Appeals’ decision on the Scurry and Estate of Murphy appeals might not pronounce a new rule on this line of a negligent security analysis. New York Civil Law will report on the appeals when the Court hands down its decision in Scurry.
Photo Credit: PointsofNoReturn
