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234 Va. 527

362 S.E.2d 919

4 Va.LawRep. 1389

Wright v. Webb

Supreme Court of Virginia

Decided November 25, 1987

Supreme Court of Virginia · decided 1987-11-25

Relies on Butler v. Acme Markets, Inc. · Nallan v. Helmsley-Spear, Inc. · 436 So. 2d 33 - Stevens v. Jefferson

Good law ✅— No negative treatment on recordhow we know

Decided 1987-11-25

How this case has been cited

Cited by 108 later decisions — most recently August 2019 · most notably Fox v. Custis (1988), Yuzefovsky v. St. John's Wood Apartments (2001)

5 federal appellate · 4 district · 83 state decisions

4701987199020002010decided

Later decisions citing this case, by decade. The current decade is in progress, and our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so the latest bars are undercounted — not a real decline.

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*534POFF, J.,

¶1concurring.

¶2I concur in the result the majority has reached but cannot subscribe to the negligence standard which I understand the Court has adopted. I would endorse the logic underlying the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 344 (1965). This rule has been adopted in nearly every jurisdiction that has considered it. See id. app. at 523-43 (1986).

¶3A business invitor is not an insurer of the safety of his invitees, and, ordinarily, he has no duty to protect them from criminal assaults by third persons. If, however, the character of his business or his past experience in the conduct of his business is such that a reasonable person should anticipate criminal assaults committed on the premises by third persons, an invitor may have a duty to warn his invitees or to take other precautionary measures to protect them from bodily harm. Id. comment f (1965). A number of courts have found that such a duty may exist if an invitor knows or should know of a history of prior criminal assaults committed on his business premises that poses a reasonable likelihood that other invitees may be the victim of criminal assaults. See, e.g., Stevens v. Jefferson, 436 So. 2d 33, 34-35 (Fla. 1983); Early v. N.L.V. Casino Corp., 100 Nev. 200, 203-04, 678 P.2d 683, 684-85 (1984); Butler v. Acme Markets, Inc., 89 N.J. 270, 277-81, 445 A.2d 1141, 1145-46 (1982); Nallon v. Helmsley-Spear, Inc., 50 N.Y.2d 507, 519-20, 407 N.E.2d 451, 458, 429 N.Y.S.2d 606, 613 (1980); Murphy v. Penn Fruit Co., 274 Pa. Super. 427, 433-34, 418 A.2d 480, 483-84 (1980). Although I agree that the prior criminal assaults reflected in the evidence in this case would not raise such a duty, I would not categorically foreclose the possibility of a duty stemming from a history of prior assaults.

¶4STEPHENSON, J., joins in concurring opinion.

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