Wednesday, August 6, 2008

Wednesday's Weird But True Legal Cases - Vol XXII

Tonight's weird (but true) legal cases examines the standards of responsibility that a rock concert promoter and municipality must utilize in protecting their patrons. In Maheshwari v. City of New York, 307 A.D.2d 797, 763 N.Y.S.2d 287 (1st Dept. 2003) the Appellate Division, First Department considered a matter where an individual who was distributing leaflets for the krishna society was beaten outside of a Lollapalooza festival at on Randall's Island in New York City.

In discussing the facts of the case, the court noted that the 59 year old plaintiff has been distributing krishna pamphlets to concertgoers in the Sunken Meadow parking lot outside of Downing Stadium. After handing out the pamphlets, the plaintiff returned to a van which held his belongings. As he attempted to unlock the van he was beaten by four drunken white men aged 18-20. The court noted that there was nothing in the record to indicate that the men were concertgoers, he had not seen them prior to the attack and they said nothing to him before or after the incident. The men were never apprehended.

The plaintiff filed suit against the City of New York and the concert promoter, alleging that they had disregarded their duty to protect the public. Central to this theory was a report by a journalist that the audience was "a moshing crowd of bare chested, sweating, staggeringly drunk and stoned 'Beavis and Butthead' types" that the Plaintiff argued the City and the promoter should have expected would become intoxicated and engage in aggressive and violent behavior. The Plaintiff also submitted that the defendants were negligent in that the 'post sheet' indicated that no officer had been assigned to patrol the parking lot.

The majority of the bench hearing the case ruled that the trial court should have granted summary judgment to the defendants. In so doing the court explained that even if there had been a lapse in security in the parking lot, the plaintiff's injuries resulted from the independent, intervening criminal act that did not flow from a lack of security.

Writing for the dissent, Judge Saxe (joined by Judge Mazzarelli) indicated that the matter should not have been determined on summary judgment and that a jury should have determined whether the incident was foreseeable. In so doing, the dissent cited to the fact that there had been arrests for misdemeanor assault and disorderly conduct at prior Lollapalooza concerts and that at a pre-event meeting, the police captain had discussed the need to patrol the parking fields to make sure that there was no tailgating or drinking during the concert.

Under NY law, not every decision from an intermediate appellate court can be automatically appealed to the Court of Appeals (New York's highest court). One exception involves cases (like this one) where two judges of the Appellate Division dissent.

On appeal to the Court of Appeals, the matter was affirmed by unanimous decision. 2 N.Y.3d 288, 778 N.Y.S.2d 442 (2004). In so doing, the Court noted:

Here, the brutal attack was not a foreseeable result of any security breach. The types of crimes committed at past Lollapalooza concerts are of a lesser degree than a criminal assault, and would not lead defendants to predict that such an attack would occur or could be prevented. By all accounts, defendants took reasonable measures to deal with issues of crowd control and other forms of disorderliness short of unprovoked criminal acts. A random criminal attack of this nature is not a predictable result of the gathering of a large group of people.
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