Clohesy v. Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc.

The opinion of the Court was delivered by

COLEMAN, J.

The issue in this appeal is whether the owner of a large supermarket with a correspondingly large parking lot had a duty in 1991 to provide security or warnings in its parking lot to protect its customers from the criminal acts of third parties, when prior similar criminal acts had not occurred in the parking lot. Kathleen Dalton, a customer at defendant’s supermarket, was abducted from defendant’s parking lot and later murdered. Prior to this incident, there had never been an abduction on Food Circus Supermarkets, Inc.’s (“Foodtown”)…