## Facts

- The plaintiff was involved in a business venture with an individual who later became the assailant.
- The business relationship deteriorated amid disputes involving money and control.
- The assailant allegedly made repeated serious threats of physical harm against the plaintiff.
- The defendants (other business associates/co-venturers) allegedly knew of the assailant’s violent tendencies and specific threats.
- The plaintiff alleged he was not adequately warned about the seriousness or specificity of the threats.
- The assailant shot the plaintiff, causing severe injury (or death).
- The plaintiff (or estate) sued the non-shooter defendants for negligence based on failure to warn and failure to protect against the foreseeable criminal attack.

## Issues

1. Whether business associates who know of a co-venturer’s serious threats owe a common-law duty to warn or protect the threatened associate from a third party’s criminal attack.
2. Whether foreseeability of harm based on known threats is sufficient, without a recognized special relationship, to impose an affirmative duty to act.

## Decision

- The Illinois Supreme Court held the defendants owed no duty to warn or protect the plaintiff from the assailant’s criminal act.
- The court declined to treat co-venturers or business associates as a “special relationship” category that creates an affirmative duty to protect against third-party crimes.
- The court ruled that knowledge of threats and foreseeability, standing alone, do not create a duty to warn or protect in this context.
- The court reversed the appellate court to the extent it recognized such a duty and reinstated judgment for the defendants.

## Legal Principles

- As a general rule, there is no affirmative common-law duty to protect another from the criminal acts of a third party.
- A duty to protect against third-party criminal acts may arise only when a recognized special relationship exists between:
  - the defendant and the plaintiff (e.g., relationships involving dependence or an undertaking to protect), or
  - the defendant and the third party that gives the defendant control over the third party.
- Foreseeability of harm, even supported by specific threats, does not by itself establish a duty to act.
- Business association, partnership, or joint-venture ties do not, without more, create a duty to warn or protect one associate from another associate’s criminal violence.
- Courts consider policy consequences of imposing broad affirmative duties to warn or protect, including the burden and indeterminate scope of such obligations.

## Conclusion

The court refused to expand Illinois negligence law to impose on business associates an affirmative duty to warn or protect a co-venturer from another associate’s threatened criminal violence, holding that foreseeability and knowledge of threats are insufficient absent a recognized special relationship or control-based circumstance.


Iseberg v. Gross, 227 Ill. 2d 78 (Ill. 2007)