Court Rules Businesses Must Protect Customers But State High Court Says That Needn’t Include Security Guards

Business owners have a duty to protect customers from assaults and other crimes, and can be held liable for failing to do so, the Washington Supreme Court ruled Thursday.

But in its 7-2 decision written by Justice Phil Talmadge, the court also ruled that owners cannot be expected to guarantee protection from criminals, and are not automatically required to hire security guards to protect customers on their premises.

The court said such a requirement would “unfairly shift the responsibility for policing, and the attendant costs, from the government to the private sector.”

The court found that “a special relationship exists between a business and an invitee because the invitee enters the business premises for the economic benefit of the business.”

Customers entrust themselves “to the control of the business owner over the premises and to the conduct of others on the premises,” the court said, adding that business owners have a duty to “to keep their premises reasonably free of physically dangerous conditions in situations in which business invitees may be harmed by third persons.”

Business owners must “exercise reasonable care to discover that such acts are being done and to give a warning adequate to enable visitors to avoid the harm, or otherwise protect themselves.”

But business is not a “guarantor of the invitee’s safety for all third-party conduct on the business premises,” the court said, adding, “this is too expansive a duty.”

In so ruling, the court upheld a Pierce County Superior Court dismissal of a 1990 lawsuit brought by Ken Nivens of Tacoma. He sued 7-11 Hoagy’s Corner and the Southland Corp., after he was assaulted in the 7-11 parking lot by youths who had asked him to buy them beer.

The high court said the lower court was correct in rejecting Niven’s contention that the 7-11 had a duty to protect him by hiring security guards.