Appeals Court Reloads Suit by Trucker Run Over After Foiled Break-In
The Court of Appeals said there was enough evidence that a supposedly secure parking lot for long-distance truckers had ignored safety concerns to support a suit by a driver who was attacked and run over by a would-be burglar.
July 03, 2019 at 05:39 PM
6 minute read
The Georgia Court of Appeals revived claims brought by a long-distance trucker asleep in his cab in a secured parking lot who was awakened by a would-be intruder only to be run over—three times—when he stepped out of his cab to investigate.
In dismissing the case, the trial judge had ruled that, while there was evidence of prior crime at the facility, it was not so similar as to be foreseeable by the site's management.
The Court of Appeals disagreed.
Judge Sara Doyle, writing with the concurrence of Judges Christian Coomer and Todd Markle, said that—while previous break-ins and property crimes had not resulted in anyone being hurt—the injuries the truck driver suffered were “directly related to the commission of the property crime of breaking into a tractor-trailer.”
The fact that a third party's criminal action spurred those injuries does not shield the facility, which was on notice of criminal activity and was aware that one of three gates was broken, Doyle wrote.
“The fact that [the plaintiff's] injuries were different than those one would normally expect from a truck break-in is not a fact that demands summary judgment in this instance,” she said.
Attorney Darren Penn, who represents plaintiff Steve Rautenberg, welcomed the ruling.
“We're obviously very pleased with the opinion,” Penn said.
“We think it clarifies some of the decisions that have come forth in recent years when you're talking about the seminal issue of third-party criminal activity in premises liability cases,” said Penn, who represents Rautenberg with Penn Law colleague Alexandra “Sachi” Cole.
The defendants are represented by Jacob Daly and D. Jeffrey Grate of Freeman Mathis & Gary.
In an email, Daly said they had not yet discussed the ruling with their clients.
“All I can say is that we are considering our options but have not yet made a decision about how to proceed from here,” he said.
According to the opinion and other filings, Rautenberg had dropped off his trailer and pulled into Global Parts' gated lot on Moreland Avenue in June 2012 for a rest while he waited to pick up another trailer.
The parts shop leased secured spaces to trucking companies for their drivers to use or park their rigs.
Around 5 p.m. Rautenberg was asleep in his cab's sleeper compartment when he said he was awakened by a “knocking” sound and felt the truck “kind of doing a little swaying.”
Looking toward the driver's window Rautenberg saw a man with a bar or screwdriver “jabbing” at the window track. The intruder disappeared as Rautenberg scrambled toward the door.
Still in his socks, Rautenberg opened the door to find another truck parked right next to his.
The other truck was so close Rautenberg stepped directly from his truck onto its running board, thinking the man behind the wheel might be dropping off his expected trailer.
Instead, that driver quickly sped off, with Rautenberg hanging onto the mirror bracket and afraid to let go because he was not wearing any shoes.
The truck sideswiped another trailer in the lot, knocking Rautenberg off and running over him.
As he lay in the lot, it backed up and ran over him again.
“I guess I was run over three times,” Rautenberg is quoted as saying.
He sustained multiple serious injuries; Penn said the would-be truck burglar was never caught.
Rautenberg sued Global Parts and its owners, Robert Pope and Pope Property Investments, in DeKalb County State Court.
There were three gates to the lot, but court filings said one gate was inoperable, as were some security cameras and the gate access keypad.
According to court documents, one Global Parts employee testified that there had been several complaints about the malfunctioning gate and perhaps as many as 20 reported thefts, including “hundreds of thousands of dollars of furniture stolen from multiple trailers belonging to one company,” he said.
Another deposed employee said that there had been multiple burglaries and at least one vehicle reported stolen from the property.
The Global Parts defendant moved for summary judgment, and last year, Judge Wayne Purdom granted it, ruling that “prior property crimes in a common area such as a parking garage or parking lot are insufficient to create a factual issue regarding an assault.”
He also said there were inconsistencies in Rautenberg's statements as to whether the object in the man's hand was a screwdriver or pry bar, and said he may have “triggered“ the assault by leaving his cab.
“The crime involved in this lawsuit was triggered because [Rautenberg] was stepping on the perpetrator's truck looking in the passenger window, an event not readily foreseeable in itself,” Purdom said.
On appeal, Rautenberg's lawyers argued that the “Court of Appeals should expressly refute the creeping notion in the trial court's opinion that an intervening third-party crime can obliterate every other basis of premises liability … regardless of contractual agreements, regardless of open and obvious dangers, and regardless of the property custodian's grossly negligent inattention to safety.”
In the July 2 opinion reversing Purdom, Doyle wrote that “despite the trial court's findings otherwise, Rautenberg presented sufficient evidence which precluded summary judgment based on an intervening criminal act.”
Global Parts' representatives had admitted to knowing about burglaries and thefts on the site, and email messages made clear that Rautenberg's employers had selected the lot for its purported security.
Rautenberg's injuries “were directly related to the commission of the property crime of breaking into a tractor-trailer (the type of crime of which Global Parts was on notice and expected to guard against) and the suspect's ensuing flight from the area as opposed to, for example, a sudden intentional assault performed in an area known for minor theft,” she said.
Rautenberg's inconsistencies “were minor or were not actually inconsistencies but instead were the witness's admission that he was unsure of precisely what occurred at certain points,” Doyle wrote.
Thus, “the trial court erred by granting summary judgment based on the lack of foreseeability of a third-party crime.”
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