No-Duty Court guts jury's award of damages to family of crime victim

JUDICIAL TORT REFORM: Trammell Crow v. Gutierrez (Tex. 2008)

Applying one of its favorite jurisprudential hatchets to kill awards of damages by Texas juries, the Texas Supreme Court here decides as a matter of law that the landowner owed the person killed on its premises no duty to provide adequate security to prevent the deadly attack.

No duty - no liability, regardless of the jury might have found based on the evidence presented.

The shooting was not foreseeable, the majority, in an opinion by Don R. Willett concludes, although 227 crimes had been reported over the course of the prior two years at the same location. Because most of these crimes were less severe and only a dozen or so involved robber, assault and/or guns, the land owner had no reason to anticipate that things might escalate. The shooting victim suffered the effects of a more serious crime than what was common for the area, the mall owner had no duty to provide security against that more serious risk, and therefore his survivors deserve having the jury verdict in their favor reversed.

Or so the Supremes' reasoning goes.

In reaching this result, the majority of the Court finds comfort in expert evidence in the case that showed that less crime occurred at the mall in question than in the city as a whole. The obvious fact that the entire population does not daily parade through the mall, much less reside there on a permanent basis - i.e., that the incidence of crime would have to be measured against the number of people at risk, rather than the city's population as a whole was merely acknowledged in passing.

Trammell Crow Central Texas, Ltd v. Gutierrez, No. 07-0091 (Tex. Aug. 29, 2008)(Willett) (premises liability, owner liability for crime on property, forseeability, no duty)
TRAMMELL CROW CENTRAL TEXAS, LTD. v. MARIA GUTIERREZ, INDIVIDUALLY AND AS
REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF LUIS GUTIERREZ; AND KAROL FERMAN AS NATURAL
PARENT AND AS NEXT FRIEND OF LUIS ANGEL GUTIERREZ; from Bexar County; 4th district
(04-05-00056-CV, 220 SW3d 33, 12-20-06)
The Court reverses the court of appeals' judgment and renders judgment.
Justice Willett delivered the opinion of the Court, in which Justice O'Neill, Justice Wainwright, Justice
Medina, and Justice Green joined.
Chief Justice Jefferson delivered a concurring opinion, in which Justice Hecht, Justice Brister, and Justice
Johnson joined.