Torts

• Author: International Law Group

Modbury Triangle Shopping Centre, Ltd. (the Centre) owned a shopping center near Adelaide, Australia. John Doe worked at a video store in the shopping complex. which had an outdoor area for parking cars. At night the car park was dark unless the car park lights were turned on. One night Doe closed the video store at around ten p.m. and went out to his car in the lot. On the way, three men attacked Doe with a baseball bat, inflicting serious injuries. The lights in the parking lot were not on at the time.

Doe and his wife sued the Centre for breach of a duty of due care as occupier of the land. The trial judge ruled for Doe. He held that the Center owed a duty of care for the security of tenants and customers, and that it had breached that duty by not keeping the car park lights on at the time Doe was leaving the video store. The judge also held that causation was shown because there was "a clear connection between the safeguard of the lighting of the common area being denied to the plaintiff and the attack".

The Centre appealed to the Full Court of the Supreme Court of South Australia but that Court dismissed the appeal. The Centre then secured special leave to appeal to the High Court. There it maintained that it did not owe Doe a duty to take reasonable care to prevent harm from the deliberate criminal behavior of a third party. The Centre also argued that the finding of causation was in error.

In a 4 to 1 vote, the High Court allows the appeal. In the majority's view, the Centre's failure to leave the lights on might have made the crime easier to commit, as did the Centre's decision to provide a parking lot in the first place along with Doe's choice to park there. But it was not the proximate cause of Doe's injuries.

"There may be circumstances in which, not only is there a foreseeable risk of harm from criminal conduct by a third party, but, in addition, the criminal conduct is attended by such a high degree of foreseeability, and predictability, that it is possible to argue that the case would be taken out of the operation of the...