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Liability For Assaults

If someone assaults you in Virginia you have the right to make a claim for money damages against him for any injury or harm cause to you by the intentional act. The person that committed the crime may also be responsible in Virginia (VA) separately for their actions in a criminal court separate and apart from any money damages they may owe you. The problem is collectability of any money damage award against the criminal assailant. Normally insurance policies exclude intentional acts from their coverage. Therefore you probably aren’t going to be able to get any money from the home owner’s policy or other insurance of the person who attacked you. Insurance companies are only responsible if the injury can be characterized as one resulting by mistake from an accident. When people call me as a Virginia (VA) personal injury lawyer to analyze an assault case, I try to figure out of there is any chance that the assailant was a wealthy person. You do hear on the news about celebrity murderers like O. J. Simpson or the criminal being a multi millionaire or an heir to a fortune. Under those unusual circumstances where the person doing the crime has independent wealth, you can sue them in a civil court for the injury caused to you as well as punitive damages for the intentional action.

A problem arises where the assailant is someone like Mr. Cho who went on the rampage at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia (VA) . That guy did not have enough money to satisfy the huge financial and emotional losses he caused by his killings. Under those circumstances a personal injury lawyer in Virginia (VA) must look to see if there is some other person or entity that may have been negligent, whose actions proximately caused the injury. A given injury can have more than one legal cause. A proximate cause is a cause that naturally and directly leads to the injury. Anytime you try to hold a third party responsible in Virginia for the criminal action of someone else, you have a fairly tough sell to a Virginia jury that the third party directly and proximately lead to the injury or death. However, there are circumstances where this is clearly a plausible theory.

For example, there have been cases of gun store liability where an assailant was allowed to purchase a gun in a way which was clearly against the law and the gun store owner knew or was reckless in disregarding the law. Another scenario is negligent entrustment. For example, if you lend your car to a drunk knowing that they were drunk at the time you gave him the keys, you can be held liable. All of these situations where a third person can be held responsible for another's crime are where the person who committed the crime is in a special relationship to the person who negligently assisted them. For example, in the Virginia (VA) Tech scenario, the school was in a special relationship with its teachers and students, especially young people living in the dormitories. There the school may have a higher duty to protect and provide security than someone who had no special relationship to the shooter or the victim.

An interesting case occurred recently in the western part of Virginia. A man and women at a place of employment in Harrisonburg, Virginia were shot by a third person who also worked at that business. The Virginia circuit court judge recently held that the case could go forward on behalf of the couple who were shot not only against the shooter but also against the employer. Because the employer was in a special relationship to both the shooter and the victim they would be in a position of potentially higher duties regarding security. In this particular case there is evidence that the employer knew that the shooter had violent tendencies, had an obsession with his female co-worker who was ultimately killed, and that there were specific threats causing the female co-worker to be afraid of this person. However the employer did nothing what so ever to protect its employees as far as the allegations of the claimants under these circumstance. The judge said that a jury could reasonably conclude that the employer was negligent in failing to use ordinary care as far as keeping the dangerous employee on the staff and failing to protect the other employees against a known threat. Potentially punitive damages could be awarded under these circumstances according to the Virginia (VA) judge. These rulings were made when the insurance defense lawyer for the employer tried to have the case thrown out on these issues saying that the employer should not be held responsible under any circumstances. I was glad to see that this Virginia (VA) judge out of Harrisonburg took a strong position, and a correct one, allowing this case to go forward to a jury. Then it would be up to the jury to evaluate the conduct of the employer who may have unnecessarily allowed this shooting to take place on its business premises leading to the death of two innocent people. By letting the case go forward, the judge isn’t deciding whether there is going to be a fault found on the part of the employer for the criminal act of the third party or whether that fault proximately caused the deaths. Rather all he is doing is saying that reasonable people could disagree about this and to let a Harrisonburg, Virginia jury decide. That is the way the civil court system in Virginia and United States is supposed to work.

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Shapiro, Cooper Lewis & Appleton, P.C.
1294 Diamond Springs Road
Virginia Beach, VA 23455

Toll Free: (800) 752.0042
Phone: (757) 460-7776
Fax: (757) 460.3428

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