McAfee & Taft trial lawyer Jim Webb was interviewed for a Journal Record article about a Lincoln County court case in which Wal-Mart was sue by the mother of a young boy who was sexually assaulted by a man in the restroom at the Wal-Mart store in Chandler.
The article reported that "the District Court of Lincoln County had previously granted summary judgment to Wal-Mart, agreeing with the store’s assertion that the molestation incident was 'an intervening criminal act of a third party' that the company had no control over or duty to prevent, even though the plaintiffs were on the premises as Wal-Mart’s business invitees."
The appeals court reversed the lower court's judgment, finding that the facts in the case "were not so clear-cut as to justify summary judgment," the article reported.
“The Court of Civil Appeals did not say that Wal-Mart did anything wrong,” Webb told The Journal Record. “It did not say that Wal-Mart did not do enough to prevent this incident from happening. It did not say that Wal-Mart is going to lose the case at trial. The court merely said that the case was not so crystal clear that it could be decided by a district court judge, rather than a jury.”
Webb said that summary judgement is granted on a very limited basis, "only in cases where there is no substantial controversy as to material facts.
“As the court said, each case will rise and fall on its own facts,” Webb told The Journal Record. “The determination of whether ‘reasonable measures’ were taken depends on all types of issues, such as what type of store it is, where it is located, and how much traffic the store has. For example, if a big-box store is right next door to a minimum-security prison for sexual offenders, it obviously needs to do more to protect its business invitees than, say, a 1,000-square-foot clothing store in a suburban strip mall.”
You can read the article in its entirety here.
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