Court of Appeals holds in two premises security cases “that “the sophisticated nature of an attack may in some cases be relevant to the proximate cause analysis, the fact that an attack was “targeted” does not sever the causal chain between a landlord’s negligence and a plaintiff’s injuries as a matter of law.”

In Scurry v NY City Hous. Auth., _NY3d_, 2023 NY Slip Op 02752 (2023), the Court of Appeals addressed two premises security cases involving broken door locks in NYCHA buildings where intruders gained access and specifically targeted their victims, killing them.

The Court of Appeals’ decision begins with a taut précis on the law and its application to the heartbreaking facts in the two cases before it:

Bridget Crushshon and Tayshana Murphy lived in two different public housing complexes owned and operated by the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). Their assailants, who were intruders onto the premises, entered their buildings through exterior doors that, for the purpose of these appeals, we assume did not have functioning locks. An intruder murdered Ms. Crushshon in the hallway of her building by immolating her; an intruder murdered Ms. Murphy by shooting her at point-blank range as she begged for her life. In both cases, plaintiffs sued NYCHA for negligence. In both cases, NYCHA admits that it had a duty to provide a locking exterior door. In both cases, NYCHA claimed entitlement to summary judgment on the theory that, because the assailants did not commit crimes of opportunity but instead had “targeted” their victims, NYCHA’s negligence was not a proximate cause of the deaths.

We reiterate that general negligence principles apply to cases in which a tenant is injured by a third party’s criminal attack, including the principle that “[a] defendant’s negligence qualifies as a proximate cause where it is a substantial cause of the events which produced the injury” (citations omitted). As we explained in Burgos v Aqueduct Realty Corp., there is “no need to create a special rule for premises security cases, since the burden regularly placed on plaintiffs to establish proximate cause in negligence cases strikes the desired balance” between “a tenant’s ability to recover for an injury caused by the landlord’s negligence against a landlord’s ability to avoid liability when its conduct did not cause any injury” (citation omitted). We hold that though the sophisticated nature of an attack may in some cases be relevant to the proximate cause analysis, the fact that an attack was “targeted” does not sever the causal chain between a landlord’s negligence and a plaintiff’s injuries as a matter of law. We thus affirm the Second Department’s denial of summary judgment to NYCHA in Scurry and reverse the First Department’s grant of summary judgment to NYCHA in Murphy.

Scurry v NY City Hous. Auth., _NY3d_, 2023 NY Slip Op 02752 (2023)

The Court reviewed a landlord’s duty to protect tenants:

Landlords have a common-law duty to take minimal precautions to protect tenants from foreseeable harm, including a third party’s foreseeable criminal conduct (citation omitted). That includes what we have deemed “the most rudimentary security—e.g., locks for the entrances” of apartment buildings (citation omitted). NYCHA admits it bears that duty.

A failure to supply minimal security breaches that duty. In Murphy, Supreme Court noted that the door’s lock was not functioning. In Scurry, Supreme Court held, and NYCHA concedes for the purpose of this appeal, that there was an issue of fact as to “whether NYCHA had fulfilled [its] duty to provide a safe environment at the Cypress Hills Houses.” Thus, in both cases, plaintiffs at a minimum demonstrated questions of fact as to breach.

The primary issue on these appeals is whether NYCHA was entitled to summary judgment on the issue of proximate cause.  “A defendant’s negligence qualifies as a proximate cause where it is a substantial cause of the events which produced the injury” (citation omitted). “When faced with a motion for summary judgment on proximate cause grounds, a plaintiff need not prove proximate cause by a preponderance of the evidence, which is plaintiff’s burden at trial. Instead, in order to withstand summary judgment, a plaintiff need only raise a triable issue of fact regarding whether defendant’s conduct proximately caused plaintiff’s injuries” (citation omitted).

In Burgos, we held that proximate cause in a premises security case may be “established only if the assailant gained access to the premises through a negligently maintained entrance” (citation omitted). Indeed, the risk that an intruder will enter the building and harm residents is the very risk that renders a landlord negligent for failing to provide locked exterior doors. Where minimal security measures, such as a locked door or lobby attendant, “would have had the effect of deterring” an attacker, a jury can infer that the absence of such measures proximately caused an attack (citation omitted). This is so regardless of “whether the crime in question was one of random violence or was a deliberate, planned ‘assassination’ attempt such as apparently occurred in Nallan (citation omitted). Thus, where the defendant fails to demonstrate on its motion for summary judgment that, as a matter of law, minimal security measures would not have deterred the intruder, the defendant is not entitled to summary judgment on proximate cause (citation omitted).

Scurry v NY City Hous. Auth., _NY3d_, 2023 NY Slip Op 02752 (2023)

The Court addressed NYCHA’s proximate cause argument focused on whether the targeted nature of the attacks constituted a superseding cause:

NYCHA argues that as a matter of law, its negligence could not have proximately caused the death of Ms. Crushshon or Ms. Murphy because they were the victims of targeted attacks, and landlords do not have a “duty to outwit or outthink those who are determined to overcome” the “minimal steps a landowner is required to take to secure premises” (citations omitted). In other words, NYCHA contends that where a landlord offers evidence that an attack is “targeted,” that landlord has demonstrated that the assailant would have gained access to the building even if the door had been properly secured; to successfully oppose a motion for summary judgment, the plaintiff must rebut that demonstration by showing that a locked door would have in fact deterred the assailant. In the Appellate Division’s view, because Mr. Cartagena and Mr. Brockington “were intent on gaining access to the building” and “[i]n reality . . . [it] is hardly ever the case” that “minimal precautions would have actually prevented a determined assailant from gaining access . . . it does not take a leap of the imagination to surmise” that they would have killed Ms. Murphy even had the door been locked. Thus, according to the Appellate Division, proximate cause was “negate[d]” as a matter of law (citation omitted).

That reasoning mistakes a patently factual determination—whether a locked door would have prevented an attack—for a legal one—i.e, that an attacker’s intent is a superseding cause as a matter of law. It is well settled that “[g]iven the unique nature of the inquiry in each case, proximate cause is generally an issue for the trier of fact, so long as the court has been satisfied that a prima facie case has been established and the evidence could support various reasonable inferences” (citations omitted). “[I]n order to withstand summary judgment, a plaintiff need only raise a triable issue of fact regarding whether defendant’s conduct proximately caused plaintiff’s injuries” (citation omitted). Plaintiffs in both Scurry and Murphy raised triable issues of fact regarding proximate cause; in both cases, proximate cause should be assessed by the finder of fact.

Scurry v NY City Hous. Auth., _NY3d_, 2023 NY Slip Op 02752 (2023)

The Court concluded by addressing NYCHA’s claim that the attacks constituted an intervening cause as a matter of law:

Though NYCHA frames these fact questions as issues of superseding cause as a matter of law, we have repeatedly emphasized that just “[a]s with determinations regarding proximate cause generally, ‘[b]ecause questions concerning what is foreseeable and what is normal may be the subject of varying inferences,’ whether an intervening act is foreseeable or extraordinary under the circumstances ‘generally [is] for the fact finder to resolve” (citation omitted). “[W]here the risk of harm created by a defendant’s conduct corresponds to that which actually results[,] . . . [t]the determination of proximate cause is best left for the factfinder” (citation omitted). Only in “rare cases” can the issue be decided as a matter of law (citation omitted).

There “may be more than one proximate cause of an injury,” and it is “well settled that where the acts of a third person intervene between the defendant’s conduct and the plaintiff’s injury, the causal connection is not automatically severed” (citation omitted). Instead, just as with general determinations of proximate cause, when the issue of proximate cause involves an intervening act, “liability turns on whether the intervening act is a normal or foreseeable consequence of the situation created by the defendant’s negligence” (citation omitted). It is “[o]nly where ‘the intervening act is extraordinary under the circumstances, not foreseeable in the normal course of events, or independent of or far removed from the defendant’s conduct,’ [that it] may possibly ‘break[ ] the causal nexus’“ (citation omitted). But “[a]n intervening act may not serve as a superseding cause, and relieve an actor of responsibility, where the risk of the intervening act occurring is the very same risk which renders the actor negligent” (citation omitted).

Here, the risk created by the nonfunctioning door locks—that intruders would gain access to the building and harm residents—is exactly the “risk that came to fruition” (citation omitted). It was not the trial court’s role, on summary judgment, to assess the fact-bound question of whether the intruders in Scurry or Murphy would have persevered in their attacks had the doors been securely locked. This is not to say that the sophistication and planning of an attack is irrelevant to the factfinder’s determination of proximate cause, or even that it could never rise to such a degree that it would sever the proximate causal link as a matter of law (citation and parenthetical omitted). But neither Scurry nor Murphy approaches that level.

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In sum, what might have happened had the doors in both buildings worked properly is a question of fact. We cannot say that, as a matter of law, it is “extraordinary under the circumstances [or] not foreseeable in the normal course of events” that an abusive former intimate partner or a violent neighboring gang would enter through a door negligently maintained by a landlord and injure a resident (citation omitted). NYCHA thus did not meet its burden as a movant for summary judgment to demonstrate the absence of material issues of fact as to proximate cause (citation omitted).

Scurry v NY City Hous. Auth., _NY3d_, 2023 NY Slip Op 02752 (2023)

The final portion of the opinion addressed, and dispensed with, NYCHA’s argument that it was entitled to summary judgment because it lacked notice of the broken door lock in Murphy.

Decision Date: May 23, 2023

Practical Practice Point

Our Practical Practice Points are intended to add value to the analysis of the decision of the week.  We think the Scurry decision needs no elaboration or explanation.