February 26, 2008
Does Your Security Progam Meet a Reasonable Standard of Care?
Security driven lawsuits continue to cost American Businesses millions of dollars every year. Lately the evening news informs us about mall shootings, apartment complex shootings, hospital shootings, college campus shootings and school shootings, all within the last two months. Most, if not all of these crimes will eventually produce lawsuits against the owners of the various respective business enterprises and/or schools.
These litigations, which are generally classified as premises liability lawsuits will be brought against various defendants under the theory that there was inadequate security to have prevented the crime. The question then becomes, how much security would have been adequate? That question is difficult to answer. Security lawsuits are very different from most other personal injury lawsuit largely because determining a reasonable standard is not easy. In medical malpractice lawsuits the reasonable standard that was breached is often apparent. In structural defect cases, engineers can usual show a design flaw that breached the standard. The same is usually the in product liability cases. Clearly in slip and fall cases the standard is usually not difficult to ferret out. No so for security cases.
Why?: Because security is a situational discipline. The efficacy and adequacy of security for any given location or for any business are determined by a wide range of factors specific to that entity.
What are some of those factors?
v The level of criminal activity
o The level of relevant criminal activity
v The level of police presence
v Previous incidents
v The security measure employed
o Security officers
o Lighting
o Surveillance systems
o Access management
o The use of barriers
v Recent security analysis
v Notice
The list above is representative of the kinds factors that may be taken into consideration in trying to determine how much security is reasonable.
For those of you who may become victims of crime, the most fundamental security method is your behavior. The National Crime Prevention Coalition has found that about 80% of the victims of crime would not have become victims if they had exercised a little more caution. This means that crime victims have some level of responsibility to reasonably avoid threatening situations. The degree to which an alleged victim may have partially caused his or her victimhood is referred to as “contributory negligence.” For example, if you walk into a nightclub and in the course of the evening, pick a fight with another patron, and that patron beats you to a pulp, you most likely have some responsibility for your own demise.
If you ever find yourself in a security related lawsuit, whether as a defendant or a plaintiff, it is important that your legal representation has experience with this category of personal injury law.
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