Abstract
Fear of criminal attack is a fact of life for most people, so they do their best to take preventative measures to protect themselves and those they love. Thus, while most parents would never allow their children to spend an evening in a dark alley with their friends, most parents do feel comfortable dropping their children off at a shopping mall for the night to socialize, ship, or watch movies. Parents to this because they find comfort in knowing that their children will be indoors in a will-lit area in the midst of other shoppers, storekeepers, and security. The atmosphere of certain public places, such as shopping centers, has traditionally made patrons feel safe and secure. Up until now, if a patron was criminally attacked in a place of business such as a shopping mall, Missouri courts generally did not side with a patron who sued the owner of the premises. This was recently changed by the Missouri Supreme Court’s holding L.A.C. v. Ward Parkway Shopping Center Co., L.P., in which the court held that a patron could sue as a third party beneficiary of the contract between the shopping center and the security company, and the security company had a duty to protect patrons from foreseeable attacks, and the attack on the patron was foreseeable.
Recommended Citation
Josephine M. Pottebaum,
Missouri Supreme Court Clarifies: Siding with Business Owners in Negligent Security Actions May Have Been Wrong All Along - L.A.C. v. Ward parkway Shopping Center Co., L.P.,
68 Mo. L. Rev.
(2003)
Available at: https://scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol68/iss2/6