## Facts

- Shirley Posecai shopped at Sam’s Wholesale Club in Kenner, Louisiana, and returned to her car in the parking lot around 7:20 p.m. while it was still daylight.
- As she loaded purchases into her trunk, an armed assailant hiding under her car grabbed her ankle, pointed a gun at her, and demanded her jewelry and wallet.
- Posecai surrendered her purse and valuable jewelry (approximately $19,000 total); the assailant was not identified and the property was not recovered.
- Sam’s employed a security guard inside the store from 5:00 p.m. until closing to protect the cash office; the guard could not see outside, and no guards patrolled the parking lot.
- Evidence showed minimal prior violent crime on Sam’s premises over several years, though crime in the surrounding neighborhood was higher; officers generally did not regard the Sam’s location as high-crime, and nearby businesses did not typically employ parking-lot security.

## Issues

1. Whether the retailer owed a duty to protect a customer from third-party armed robbery in its parking lot based on the foreseeability of that crime.
2. What standard Louisiana should use to evaluate foreseeability and the scope of a business’s duty to take security measures against third-party criminal acts.

## Decision

- The Louisiana Supreme Court reversed the court of appeal and rendered judgment for Wal-Mart (Sam’s).
- The court adopted a balancing test requiring courts to weigh the foreseeability and gravity of harm against the burden of imposing security measures.
- Applying that test, the court held the robbery risk on Sam’s premises was insufficiently foreseeable to impose a duty to provide additional measures such as parking-lot security patrols.

## Legal Principles

- Louisiana negligence claims are analyzed under the duty–risk framework; whether a duty exists is a question of law informed by policy considerations.
- A business proprietor is not an insurer of patron safety, but may owe a duty to take reasonable precautions against foreseeable third-party criminal acts in limited circumstances.
- The scope of a business’s duty to provide security is determined by balancing (1) the foreseeability and severity of the risk against (2) the burden and cost of the proposed protective measures.
- Crime in the surrounding area may be relevant, but limited prior similar on-premises incidents can weigh against imposing costly or intrusive security obligations.

## Conclusion

The court set Louisiana’s standard for premises-liability claims based on third-party अपराध by adopting a foreseeability–burden balancing test and found no duty to add parking-lot security where prior similar on-premises crimes were too few to make the attack sufficiently foreseeable.


Posecai v. Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 752 So. 2d 762 (La. 1999)