Premises Liability: Court denies motion to strike after determining that plaintiff’s complaint sufficiently alleged that the defendants may have owed her a duty to warn of dangers existing in areas beyond the landowner’s control

Plaintiff’s Premises Liability Action

Plaintiff brought a premises liability action against the defendants, alleging that she was a passenger in a vehicle operated by an unknown individual who purchased food at a drive-through restaurant owned by the defendants. The plaintiff claims that the unknown individual then drove to a nearby parking lot and sexually assaulted her. The plaintiff argues that the defendants were in possession and control of the parking lot and that they failed to “warn, protect, guard, and secure the safety of the plaintiff, or other similarly situated members of the public when they knew or should have known of the existence of crime and the danger of those individuals entering, using and remaining on [the defendants] property.”

Defendants’ Motion to Strike

The defendants moved to strike the plaintiff’s complaint, arguing that the plaintiff’s assertion that they possessed and controlled the parking lot is a mere conclusion of law unsupported by facts. More specifically, the defendants assert that the plaintiff’s allegations that they possessed and controlled the parking lot based on their knowledge that the parking lot was in a high crime area is insufficient to meet Connecticut’s legal standard for possession and control. The defendants argue that the plaintiff must show that the defendant was “in occupation of the land with the intent to control it,” and that the defendant held the “power or authority to manage, superintend, direct, or oversee the property where the injury occurred.”

Court’s Ruling and Denial of Motion

Plaintiff contends that the defendants’ motion to strike should be denied because a possessor of land may, under certain circumstances, have a duty to warn business invitees of dangers existing on someone else’s property if the invitee cannot reasonably be expected to discover the danger on their own. The court cites Fleming v. Garnett, 231 Conn. 77, 646 A.2d 1308 (1994), in which the Supreme Court noted that the trial court properly instructed the jury that: “[a] possessor of land has a duty to conduct its business operations in a manner that does not create an unreasonable risk of physical harm to those outside of the premises … and that this duty may include the duty to warn invitees of conditions that pose reasonably foreseeable dangers to the public.”

In the present matter, the defendant contends that the court should grant their motions to strike because the plaintiff has not alleged any facts to support her assertion that the defendants possessed or controlled the parking lot and because they had no way of knowing, and therefore no duty to warn the plaintiff, that the driver of the vehicle in which she was riding as a passenger would assault her.

Legal Implications

The court acknowledges that it may ultimately be difficult or impossible for the plaintiff to prove that the defendants’ failure to warn her of the general high crime rate in the general vicinity of the parking lot was a proximate cause of the specific assault she claims caused her injuries. This is especially because the assault was not committed by a random stranger, but was instead committed by the operator of a motor vehicle in which the plaintiff was traveling voluntarily.

However, in reviewing a motion to strike, the court is required to analyze the plaintiff’s complaint in a manner most favorable to upholding its legal sufficiency. Given the Supreme Court’s broad pronouncement in Fleming that “a possessor of land has a duty to conduct its business operations in a manner that does not create an unreasonable risk of physical harm to those outside of the premises … and that this duty may include the duty to warn invitees of conditions that pose reasonably foreseeable dangers to the public,” and given the additional pronouncement in Fleming that “when there [is] room for reasonable disagreement as to whether the plaintiff was or should have been aware of the [dangerous] condition … the jury and not the trial judge should [determine] whether the defendant had a duty to warn the plaintiff of the … condition,” the court concludes that the defendants’ motions to strike must be denied.

The court finds that although the defendant may eventually prevail on their theory that they had no duty to warn the plaintiff of an assault committed by the operator of a motor vehicle in which the plaintiff was riding voluntarily in an area the defendants did not possess or control, that is an issue for another day. Instead, this court concludes that it would not be appropriate to resolve the duty-to-warn issue within the context of a motion to strike. Therefore, the defendant’s motion to strike is denied.

Diaz v. Flatbush Charter Partners LLC, No. HHD-CV-23-6176254-S, 2024 WL 4211849 (Conn. Super. Ct. Sept. 11, 2024).