That was not your question. You asked if they should be legally required. But my reason for not being comfortable with a fake alarm warning on a theater exit has nothing to do with legal requirements. It has to do with being able to imagine a scenario where the fake warning causes harm, and weighing that against the benefit of a fake warning. If you want to compare that to the shoplifting sign, you will need to explain the harm potentially caused by the fake shoplifting sign, and why it outweighs the benefit. Otherwise your comparison makes no sense.
But again, the entire alarm issue is a red herring, and those using it are arguing in bad faith.
The door was locked from the outside. It is legally required to be able to be opened from the inside. There are no metal detectors or bag searches at the front door. Anyone can park near the exit, leave a bag near the exit, or (if they have one) leave an accomplice outside the exit. An alarm solves none of that.
The only consistent argument against the theater is that they should have searched and metal detected every patron at the front door, and posted guards at every exit.
A guy charged with 24 counts of 1st degree murder, and 116 counts of attempted murder is pretty much done ever earning a paycheck let alone satisfying any judgment against him. It was probably seen as a total waste of time by his attorney. That’s just a guess though.
I can make up a scenario where a kid walks out of the store holding a handful of store merchandise before the parents realize they lost track of the kid. Seeing a sign that says the store will prosecute all shoplifters, they decide the kid must still be inside the store since the alarms would have gone off or the store would have seen the kid leaving. Now is it an apt comparison?
You indicated earlier that you believe a door labeled as having an alarm should be alarmed because there is a remote chance it could lead someone to a bad decision. You never followed up with what you thought the consequences of that bad decision would be, but I’ll assume you believe it could lead to the death or injury of the child or maybe permanent psychological damage to the kid and/or parents? You’d have to agree that that original scenario is unlikely, to say the very least. And the worst case scenario based off that is even more unlikely. Kids are probably far, far more at risk in a theater from other things than they would be from a misleading sign, don’t you think?
I agree that the door being alarmed or not has nothing to do with the culpability of the theater. I think the theater is blameless in this, with or without a misleading sign, so I think we mostly agree.
I’m saying that in the old way of looking at this, the shooter would be the one held 100% liable. Whatever stupid little measures the theater did or did not do PALES in comparison to a person walking in with 4 guns blazing.
But even under the new way of looking at things, a madman shooting up a theater is such an unforeseeable act that there is nothing that a reasonable theater owned should have done to prevent it. We’ve talked about ushers and armed security and metal detectors.
Try to find someone to testify that reasonable theater owners employ those things to protect against maniacs. They don’t. The public doesn’t want it either. There was absolutely no duty to protect against an anomaly such as this.
Well, you know, in the eyes of some attorneys, SOMEONE has to pay, and since the perpetrator of the incident cannot do so, it is simply a matter of finding some other poor sucker to pin just enough blame on to squeeze for money.
I think you pretty much got it Chimera. The “deep pockets” theory is closely related. Somebody is “out” or “deserves” X amount of money for something that happened to them. One party is only “culpable” to a very tiny degree for said bad thing. But hey, they are only ones with any money…so hey they should pay X because they have “deep pockets”!
Actually ISTM the OP’s primary points were that the plaintiff in this suit is a douche, and the OP hoped he wouldn’t win. You are arguing he might. I think for most of us, the point is he shouldn’t, which is a totally different thing.
Your reasoning is flawed. A duty to take reasonable steps to protect does not imply that any steps at all need to be taken where the degree of risk doesn’t justify it. Would you say that the theatre owner was liable if injuries were caused when the theatre was hit by a meteor? Why not, since I bet the owner took no steps at all to prevent such injuries?
Question: Do you have any reasonable duty to protect me from Terrorists or Insane Gunmen if I am in your house or yard? Does a Church or Shopping Mall have a duty to protect me from these people?
if so, please prove what can be done to protect me from this sort of thing.
Having spent 4 years as a Security Officer, two of them armed, I can tell you that suggesting security guards is pollyanna bullshit. Just like in the movies, they’ll either be the first people shot, or they’ll be running away like everyone else. Or worse, if they are armed, and I speak from industry experience here, there is NO WAY they will ever pull their guns and start shooting unless they are already under attack, and by that time it’s usually too late. And hell, even if they did, they’d probably be fired and disavowed for having done so, because of all of the liability issues. (Hit a bystander? Congratulations, both you and your company are FUCKED.)
And then too, is that our goal for a ‘safe society’? To have armed private guards everywhere? Shopping mall, grocery store, theater, restaurants? To be a fucking (private police) Police State on perpetual lockdown?
Do we have locked and alarmed doors at every turn? Surveillance cameras every 2 feet like in Britain? And if so, is this real security or only the illusion of security? Does the presence of these things then guarantee the property owners that they are immune from future lawsuits of this kind? If not, then what value are they and why would they be required?
Honestly, if you’re going to push for a society where making such arguments in court is a valid path, then I expect some kind of explanation and justification for the end game.
THIS..(Agree with you Czarcasm) I think the biggest mistake is in the days after the incident local theatres here in atlanta.. and I’m guessing elsewhere too.. started hiring off duty cops.. Years ago I worked off duty armed security at a local huge chain theatre.. but they discontinued us and went with some unarmed 10 dollar an hour guys..
I’m not advocating nor supporting armed security guards everywhere where the public gathers..I think the local theatres have now set themselves up..if something were to happen AFTER you hired armed security cops and let them go a couple of months after the hoopla.. ahhh gotcha..
You set a certain standard of security and then abandoned it..
Sorry reason number one why cops/detectives aren’t allowed on juries.. My first though would be.. what kind of an asshole brings a six yr old to the Dark KNight. and a midnight movie at that..
Oh I know.. the same one who calls me because their 13 yr old refuses to go to school.. the same one I catch behind the church smoking weed.. and when i bring him home the parents shrug and say.. What do you expect me to do..
Yeah.. the parents who just.. can’t say.. I guess I can’t make this midnight movie since we couldn’t get a sitter and grandmom’s unavailable..
A good argument for the jury. But remember, you have a plaintiff (plaintiff’s representatives) showing pictures of a deceased victim on an autopsy table, family members in court crying, and evidence of a life cut short in it’s prime. And a theater saying we took no measures to protect, because it wasn’t foreseeable? Or we put up security cameras, they weren’t actively viewed, but would you like to see the video of the massacre? And we don’t care if back doors are left open and unsecured for several minutes while people enter and leave the establishment unobserved, it’s too much work to monitor them.
I’m betting the insurance company for the theater is shitting bricks about now.
For thpose who think it wasn’t reasonably foreseeable, what about now? It’s certainly foreseeable now isn’t it? Should the theater do anything about that problem now?
It’s always been foreseeable that nutjobs exist. What is unforeseeable is how and when the nutjobs will strike. At a kid’s camp? On a university campus? At a movie theater? In a restaurant parking lot?
We could spend our entire lives, and tons of money, trying to prevent what we can’t possibly predict. Or we could just all agree as humans that nutjobs do exist, that we have no way of predicting when they will strike, and that will all hold innocent third parties harmless, should they have the misfortune to own the venue that some random whack-a-doodle chooses to stage his violent acts.
