## Facts

- Teresa Hall, Michael Lamb, and John Schooley spent the evening drinking at a tavern operated by Fast Eddie’s d/b/a Hyway Tavern, Inc.
- The tavern manager observed Hall was heavily intoxicated and having difficulty remaining upright on a bar stool.
- The manager asked Lamb to take Hall out of the tavern; Lamb escorted Hall outside and then returned to the bar.
- Schooley later drove Hall to his trailer; Hall passed out in Schooley’s car, and Schooley went inside and passed out.
- Lamb later returned, removed Hall from Schooley’s car, transported her to another location, and shot and killed her; the circumstances suggested a sexual assault.
- Hall’s blood-alcohol content was 0.23% when her body was found; Lamb later confessed and pleaded guilty to murder.
- The Estate sued the tavern asserting (a) statutory negligence per se under Indiana’s Dram Shop Act for serving visibly intoxicated patrons and (b) common-law negligence for failure to protect Hall from Lamb’s criminal acts, including an assumed-duty theory based on the manager’s escort request.

## Issues

1. Whether a tavern owes a common-law duty to protect a patron from another patron’s later off-premises sexual assault and murder.
2. Whether the tavern assumed a duty to protect Hall by asking Lamb to escort her out of the tavern.
3. Whether alleged Dram Shop Act violations proximately caused Hall’s death, or whether Lamb’s intentional crimes were a superseding cause as a matter of law.
4. Whether summary judgment should have been granted to the tavern on the Estate’s negligence theories.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals reversed the denial of summary judgment in substantial part and remanded.
- The court held the tavern owed no common-law duty to protect Hall from Lamb’s unforeseeable criminal acts of sexual assault and murder.
- The court held the tavern did not assume a duty of care merely by asking Lamb to escort Hall out of the premises.
- The court held Lamb’s intentional criminal acts were an intervening, superseding cause breaking proximate causation for the wrongful-death claim premised on the tavern’s conduct.
- The court left only a limited statutory negligence per se theory under the Dram Shop Act potentially viable, while rejecting liability for the death on common-law duty/assumed-duty and broad causation theories.

## Legal Principles

- A premises operator’s duty to protect invitees from third-party criminal acts depends materially on the foreseeability of the particular criminal conduct.
- A tavern–patron relationship does not, by itself, create a duty to prevent unforeseeable off-premises intentional crimes by another patron.
- An assumed duty requires an affirmative undertaking to render protective services; instructing a person to escort an intoxicated patron out is not, without more, an undertaking to ensure safety.
- Negligence per se based on a Dram Shop statute still requires proof of proximate cause.
- An intentional, independent criminal act may constitute an intervening, superseding cause that breaks the chain of proximate causation.

## Conclusion

The court limited tavern liability for an intoxicated patron’s later death by holding that the tavern neither owed nor assumed a duty to protect against an unforeseeable off-premises sexual assault and murder, and that the killer’s intentional conduct was a superseding cause defeating proximate causation on the wrongful-death theories.


Fast Eddie's d/b/a Hyway Tavern, Inc. v. Hall, 688 N.E.2d 1270 (Ind. Ct. App. 1997)