## Facts

- Alice Monique Beckham Hancock drove her sister, Donna Beckham, to a Wal-Mart and waited in the parking lot while Beckham went inside.
- A manager observed Beckham attempting to shoplift clothing; store employees alerted Derrick L. Jones, an on-duty security guard employed by U.S. Security Associates, Inc. (USSA), which provided security services under contract.
- Wal-Mart maintained an internal policy discouraging pursuit of suspected shoplifters with vehicles or off store property.
- Beckham left the store quickly without the merchandise; in the parking lot, Jones shouted at Beckham and Beckham ran.
- Hancock drove toward Beckham; Beckham jumped into Hancock’s moving car and told her to leave; Hancock reversed rapidly, struck a median, and exited the lot at high speed.
- Wal-Mart employees radioed Jones and instructed him to obtain the car’s license plate number.
- Jones followed Hancock in a patrol vehicle, staying close and flashing lights, and continued onto a public highway.
- During the flight, Hancock ran a stop sign and a red light and nearly caused collisions.
- About two miles from the store, Hancock’s vehicle left the highway and crashed, causing her death.

## Issues

1. Whether the evidence permitted a reasonable jury to find Wal-Mart breached a duty of reasonable care in responding to suspected shoplifting and in its communications or control regarding Jones’s actions.
2. Whether Hancock’s fatal crash was a foreseeable consequence of Wal-Mart’s conduct sufficient to establish proximate cause.
3. Whether Hancock’s conduct so predominated that Wal-Mart was entitled to a directed verdict under comparative negligence principles.

## Decision

- The Court of Appeals affirmed the directed verdict for Wal-Mart.
- The court held the evidence did not create a jury issue that Wal-Mart breached a duty of care to Hancock.
- The court alternatively held that, even assuming negligence, Hancock’s death was not a foreseeable consequence of Wal-Mart’s conduct and thus Wal-Mart was not a proximate cause as a matter of law.
- The court treated Jones’s high-speed off-premises pursuit—allegedly contrary to Wal-Mart policy and instructions—as an intervening act not attributable to Wal-Mart on this record.

## Legal Principles

- A directed verdict is proper when the evidence permits only one reasonable inference, such that no jury issue exists on an essential element of the claim.
- Negligence requires proof of duty, breach, causation, and damages; proximate cause requires both cause-in-fact and legal cause.
- Legal cause turns on foreseeability: the injury must fall within the range of risks reasonably foreseeable from the defendant’s conduct, not be an extraordinary consequence.
- Where an intervening act is found to break the chain of legal causation, the defendant’s conduct is too remote to impose liability.

## Conclusion

The court affirmed dismissal of Wal-Mart at the directed-verdict stage, concluding the estate’s evidence did not allow a reasonable jury to find Wal-Mart breached a duty or that Wal-Mart’s conduct legally caused Hancock’s death because the off-premises high-speed flight and crash were not reasonably foreseeable consequences of Wal-Mart’s actions.


Roddey v. Wal-Mart Stores E., L.P., 400 S.C. 59, 732 S.E.2d 635 (S.C. Ct. App. 2012)