Bing v. Alachua County, 49 Fla. L. Weekly D1683 (Fla. 1st DCA Aug. 7, 2024):

A young woman attended an event held in the vicinity of a parking lot owned by Alachua County. While returning to her car parked at a location that was not owned by the county, a stray bullet fired by an individual, who was located in the county parking lot, struck and killed her.

Her personal representative sued the county, asserting that due to inadequate lighting and security in the parking lot, the killer and his cohorts were able to congregate and lie in ambush in the parking lot waiting for the crowds to leave to perpetrate their crimes.

The plaintiff claimed that the county owed a non-delegable duty to members of the public walking immediately adjacent to its parking lot, because those persons were within the zone of risk the county created through its negligence.

The plaintiff asserted that by permitting members of the public to use the parking lot, the county undertook a duty to maintain its premises in a reasonably safe condition for invitees and the public, and that it breached that duty by failing to provide adequate security or failing to warn of the dangers adjacent to its lot.

The trial court dismissed the complaint. It found that not only had the death not taken place on the county’s premises but that the plaintiffs had also failed to allege any relationship between the decedent and the county, which would have established that she was an invitee of the county or was on its premises. There was also no special duty shown to establish a governmental duty between the county and the decedent. Finally, the trial court noted that there is no common law duty to prevent the misconduct of third persons.

In affirming the dismissal, the appellate court observed that while a landowner is under a duty to invitees to maintain premises in a reasonably safe condition, and while that duty may extend to expressly provided ingress and egress areas, in this case, no one disputed that the decedent was not the county’s invitee.

The court also reiterated that a party has no legal duty to control the conduct of third persons to prevent harm to another unless the defendant is in actual or constructive control of the instrumentality of the harm, the premises upon which the tort is committed, or the person who committed the tort.

Again here, the county had no control over the property on which the decedent was shot, nor was there any special relationship alleged between the county and the shooter other than the shooter’s location on its property.

While the plaintiff’s cause of action may have been precipitated by an event on the county’s premises, the tort occurred on property not owned or controlled by it. Moreover, there was no special relationship between the defendant and the shooter, or the defendant and the decedent, nor was there any showing that the county, through some action or conduct, exercised control over the other property or otherwise extended its foreseeable zone of risk beyond its own premises.

The only alleged connection between the county and the shooter was that the shooter was on the county’s property when he fired his gun. That connection alone was not sufficient to establish a duty on the part of the county to the decedent or to the general public.