STELLA MAE BROWN, AS PERSONAL REPRESENTATIVE OF THE ESTATE OF VAUGHN LEE BROWN, DECEASED, APPELLANT,
v.
MOTEL 6 OPERATING, L.P., LTD., A DELAWARE CORPORATION, D/B/A MOTEL 6; AND ACCOR ECONOMY LODGING, INC., A DELAWARE CORPORATION, JOINTLY AND SEPARATELY, APPELLEES

Fla. 4th DCA | 2008-07-02
No. 4D07-2936
STONE and FARMER, JJ., concur.
989 So. 2d 658 Florida District Court of Appeal, Fourth District (2008) Positive Treatment
Cited by 8 cases

AI-generated. These summaries, headnotes, and key points are machine-generated and may contain errors or omissions. Always verify against the full opinion text below. Not legal advice.

Synopsis

The estate of a man shot to death in a Motel 6 room sued for wrongful death, alleging the motel's negligent security caused his death. The trial court granted summary judgment for the motel, and the appellate court affirmed, holding that although negligent security might be inferred from prior criminal incidents, the estate failed to establish causation between any security breach and the shooting.


Holding

Although a jury could potentially find that the motel breached its duty to provide adequate security based on the history of prior criminal incidents, summary judgment was proper because the estate failed to demonstrate that the injury resulted from any breach of duty. Legal causation, not merely negligence, must be proven to survive summary judgment.


Headnotes

[1] A plaintiff in a wrongful death action alleging negligence in failing to provide adequate security must prove both a breach of duty and that the injury resulted from that…

[2] A motel owner may be found to have breached a duty to provide adequate security based on past criminal incidents, even if the security measures meet minimum standards.

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Key Quotes

“the problem is that, in addition to showing a breach of duty, plaintiff must demonstrate that the injury resulted from the breach of duty”

Establishes the dual requirement of both breach and causation in negligence cases, the critical distinction that governed the court's decision

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Facts & Procedural History

The decedent was found shot to death in his motel room sometime between midnight and noon. The motel was an open-access facility with outside stairway…

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Opinion of the Court
KLEIN, J.

KLEIN, J.

The decedent was found shot to death in his motel room and his estate filed this wrongful death action, alleging that Motel 6, in light of past criminal activity, was negligent in failing to take greater security precautions. Because there was no evi dence of a forced entry, nor any evidence that the shooting could have been prevented with greater security, the trial court granted a summary judgment in favor of the defendant. We affirm.

The motel was an open type, with room access through outside stairways and balconies. The decedent was shot in his room sometime between midnight and the following noon. There were two security cameras, one at the front door and one at the front desk, and a security guard was on duty every day from 9:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. Although there had been a number of incidents reported to the sheriff during the two-year period before this incident, there were no homicides, but once a guest was robbed after opening the door to an unknown person during the night.

Plaintiffs expert on security acknowledged that there was no evidence as to how the person or persons who killed the decedent entered the room. There was no evidence of a forced entry to the decedent’s room, nor any evidence as to any activity other than the shooting. The door had a steel frame, an electronic door lock that would automatically close, and a peep hole. The expert agreed that the door met minimum standards for protecting access to the room, and that the decedent could have been shot by someone he knew and had allowed into the room.

Plaintiffs expert based his opinion that security was lax on five police reports made during the previous two-year period: 1) a burglary to a room in which property was taken without force; 2) a sale of crack cocaine set up by a police informant; 3) an officer observing a person in a car with nine baggies of marijuana; 4) an armed robbery after a guest opened the door in response to a knock; and 5) an ex-employee jumping over the front desk in order to gain access to the area where the room keys were kept.

Although there was additional information about other incidents, there is no need to describe them, because we acknowledge that a jury could find that the motel breached its duty to provide adequate security. The problem is that, in addition to showing a breach of duty, plaintiff must demonstrate that the injury resulted from the breach of duty. Kayfetz v. A.M. Best Roofing, Inc., 832 So. 2d 784 (Fla. 3d DCA 2002). That is what distinguishes this case from the cases on which the estate relies. For example, in Stevens v. Jefferson, 436 So. 2d 33, 35 (Fla.1983), our supreme court explained:

It is incumbent upon the plaintiff to prove legal causation. Warner v. Florida Jai Alai, Inc., 221 So. 2d 777 (Fla. 4th DCA 1969), cert. discharged, 235 So. 2d 294 (Fla.1970). Mrs. Jefferson met her burden by showing that the bar was a “rough” place with a history of fights and gunplay and that the owner had terminated all security service and had left the premises in the charge of a female employee who could not maintain order. Under these facts a jury could determine that a foreseeable risk of harm to patrons existed, that the risk was either created or tolerated by Stevens, that he could have remedied the danger but failed to do so, and that because of that failure to perform his duties Jefferson was killed.

Similarly, in Orlando Executive Park v. Robbins, 433 So. 2d 491 (Fla.1983), plaintiff was able to testify that an unidentified man had attacked her while she was walking from her car to her room at a motel which was aware of numerous prior episodes of criminal activity.

In this case, although the estate had four years from the time it filed this action to develop evidence from which a jury could find that the breach of duty to provide adequate security resulted in the shooting, it was unable to do so. We accordingly agree with the trial court that there were no issues of material fact and affirm the summary judgment.

STONE and FARMER, JJ., concur.


Cases With Similar Vibessemantic neighbors from the corpus


Citator

Cited By

  • …. Id. Sanders responded that the murders were reasonably foreseeable and that the proof of gaps in security established the requisite causation. Id. The Fourth District determined that its previous decision in Brown v. Motel 6 Operating, L.P., Ltd., 989 So. 2d 658 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), rev. denied, 1 So. 3d 171 (Fla.2009), “dictate[d] the outcome of [*278] this case and reverse[d] the judgment.” Id. at 930. In Brown, the decedent was murdered in his hotel room and his estate filed a wrongful death action agai…
  • ERP Operating Ltd. P'ship v. Shandalyn Sanders, 96 So. 3d 929 (Fla. 4th DCA 2012)
    …six issues. The first issue concerns whether the trial court should have granted a directed verdict on liability because the plaintiff failed to prove causation where there was no evidence of forcible entry. We find Brown v. Motel 6 Operating, L.P., 989 So. 2d 658 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008) dictates the outcome of this case and reverse the judgment. In late 2004, two young adults moved into an apartment complex marketed as a “gated community” with a gated front entrance. Water surrounded approximately seventy perce…
  • 50 State Sec. Serv., Inc. v. Lili Carissa Giangrandi, 132 So. 3d 1128 (Fla. 3d DCA 2013)
    …ed that it was unknown what happened on the night of the murders.” The court noted that “[w]ithout proof of how the assailants gained entry into the apartment, the plaintiff simply could not prove causation.” Id. In Brown v. Motel 6 Operating, L.P., 989 So. 2d 658, 659 (Fla. 4th DCA 2008), the court affirmed summary judgment on the issue of causation in a negligent security case where “[t]here was no evidence of a forced entry to the decedent’s room, nor any evidence as to any activity other than the shooting…
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