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Carroll v. Shoney's3/3/2000
efendant's manager Rhonda Jones was, at all pertinent times, acting within the line and scope of her agency for the defendant itself. Jones was informed of the decedent's husband's angry trespass into the back of the restaurant and angry threat against the deceased during the preceding night. Jones was informed that the incident was so bad the restaurant personnel needed to call the police in order to remove the husband. Jones was informed that the deceased had told her co-workers that her husband had beaten her two days earlier and that she thought that he would kill her. Nonetheless, Jones refused the deceased's plea to be excused from work, ordered the deceased to report to work, and promised to protect the deceased at work. Jones then assigned the deceased to work at the counter, where she was more exposed to violence from her husband than she would have been on virtually any other assignment within the restaurant. The husband's injuring the deceased was not just foreseeable but was expectable.
The main opinion, citing Moye v. A.G. Gaston Motels, Inc., 499 So. 2d 1368 (Ala. 1986), observes:
"Alabama law requires a plaintiff to show three elements to establish a cause of action as presented in this case. Moye, 499 So. 2d at 1370. First, the particular criminal conduct must have been foreseeable. Second, the defendant must have possessed `specialized knowledge' of the criminal activity. Third, the criminal conduct must have been a probability."
All three elements are abundantly present in the case before us. As already discussed, violence by the husband was so obviously foreseeable that the manager of the restaurant expressly promised to protect the deceased from the husband. Second, the manager had specialized knowledge of the husband's trespass, abuse, and threat the preceding night, the battery he had committed on the deceased two days earlier, and the deceased's perception of the danger he posed. Third, the husband's criminal conduct was a probability if not a certainty: the night before, he had pushed his way past a restaurant employee and trespassed into the back of the store in order to threaten the deceased that he was going to "get her."
To absolve the defendant of liability, the proposed opinion cites the rationale of Moye, supra, "that crime can and does occur despite society's best effort to prevent it...." Society did not exert its best efforts to prevent the crime committed on the deceased in the case before us. Rather the defendant, through its managerial personnel, demonstrated a preoccupation with the logistics of fast food and an irresponsible disregard for the notorious dangers of spouse abuse and the public policy of this state, expressed in a number recent statutes, against spouse abuse.
Foreseeability is a matter of common sense. The decision of this Court in this case will send a message whether we think common sense entails recognizing the danger of demonstrated spouse abuse.
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