Haggard Law Attorney Christopher Marlowe was interviewed and quoted in a just-released Bloomberg Businessweek article highlighting how Walmart’s cost-cutting measures may be directly related to an increased rate of crime at its stores nationwide. From rape to shoplifting, to kidnapping and murder, the article lays out how police are trying to corral the rampant crime in many of the nation’s number one retailer’s locations. A recent example in the last few weeks, police in Buffalo found a meth lab operating underground of a local Walmart store.
Marlowe fought Walmart for several years in a lawsuit he filed in 2010 on behalf of a woman who was abducted outside a store in DeFuniak Springs, Florida, and repeatedly raped. Marlowe discussed how Walmart made every legal maneuver to avoid releasing its in-house crime statistics.
From the article, Walmart’s Out-of-Control Crime Problem Is Driving Police Crazy By Shannon Pettypiece and David Voreacos:
Walmart’s lawyers typically argue that the company couldn’t have foreseen the crime in question and that it took reasonable steps to keep customers safe. It tries at every opportunity to keep its crime database secret. Even in litigation, when it must produce company records under court seal, its lawyers have wrangled for months or even years to limit access to its records, arguing the information is proprietary. “Nothing compares to the way Walmart litigates cases,” says attorney Christopher Marlowe. He fought Walmart for several years over a lawsuit he filed in 2010 on behalf of a woman who was abducted outside a store in DeFuniak Springs, Fla., and repeatedly raped. Marlowe said in a court filing that he learned only in 2013 of the database, which documented “precisely the sort of incidents” he sought for more than two years. Walmart’s lawyer, he said, “led everyone to believe that crime data retrieval was a great mystery—a query of inconceivable proportions.” Walmart denied liability in the case. The company eventually settled for an undisclosed sum.
Haggard Law Firm Attorney Todd Michaels was recently a guest on WEAA-FM 88.9 in Baltimore. Michaels was brought on the “Voice of the Community” to discuss his op-ed My Son’s Skin which was published in the Miami Herald. In the article Michaels discusses his concern as the father of a black child of what his child will face as he ages. The article was written following the shooting death of 12-year-old Tamir Rice in Cleveland in November 2014.
To listen to Michaels interview click here. The interview begins at 29:07.
Here is the original article published in the Miami Herald in December 2015.
My Son’s Skin
Op-ed by Todd Michaels
I’ve spent 38 years as a white boy and man in America. Actually, a Jewish man, but I’m not usually identified as a Jew, live in a place full of Jews, and I have never faced a minute of anti-Semitism. I can tell you that being a white man in America is good. It’s great. It’s all that it’s cracked up to be. The opportunity is limitless. The fear is minimal.
I’ve never spent one day as a Black boy or man.
I’ve spent 5 years and 4 months as the father of a Black boy. An amazing boy. A smart, funny, talented, cute, sweet boy who has significant opportunity and privilege and doesn’t know any bounds on what he can achieve. A boy that I’ve been able to protect thus far from the realities that a child like Tamir Rice has had to face. But I know I can’t protect him forever, and I know that at some point, and maybe at many points, he will face a different experience as a boy or man in America.
And I’ve spent a lot of those five years worrying. I never think about race. It’s never a conscious thought that the world sees me as white and my son as Black, or mixed, or whatever. I’m just his dad, and he’s just my son. But I think about it when things like Tamir Rice happen. And it makes me worry.
It makes me worry because I know that as Ashton grows, when he walks down the street, people won’t say, “There goes Todd Michaels’s son.” A lot of people will just see a Black guy walking down the street, with all that goes along with that. It’s only been five years and four months, and I’m exhausted of worrying. I can’t imagine the anger I would feel if I had to face that reality everyday.
So yes, all lives matter, but we don’t have to say that, because no one has ever questioned that white lives matter. But Black lives matter too. They matter equally. And until this country gets that in word and deed, America can never be what it claims to be.
Haggard Law’s James Blecke was selected for his exceptional appellant work.
Best Lawyers is the oldest and most highly-respected peer review guide to the legal profession worldwide. The methodology behind the per review process is designed to capture, as accurately as possible, the consensus opinion of leading lawyers about the professional abilities of their colleagues within the same geographical area and legal practice area
The Haggard Law Firm’s Todd Michaels have been invited to speak at the 62nd Annual ASIS International Conference in Orlando next month. ASIS International is a global community of security practitioners, each of whom has a role in the protection of assets – people, property, and/or information. The upcoming conference is the organization’s largest event of the year.
Michaels will present a seminar titled How to Avoid a Million Dollar Verdict Against Your Business and another called Duty and Consequence.
ASIS members represent virtually every industry in the public and private sectors, and organizations of all sizes. From entry-level managers to CSOs to CEOs, from security veterans to consultants and those transitioning from law enforcement or the military, the ASIS community is global and diverse. More than 20,000 industry professionals are expected to attend the conference.
The Haggard Law Firm has litigated more than 155 negligent security cases since 2007, delivering more than $345 million in verdicts and settlements in those cases.
Preparing to exceed the burden of proof and maximizing damages begins at client signup. The defense counsel has a head start. From the moment of loss, the defendant has secured or destroyed evidence, interviewed witnesses, researched the client, developed theories of defense, comparative fault, and otherwise played five or six key chess moves before plaintiff counsel even knew they were in the game.
Assuming the defendant is tireless and meticulous in its work is the only safe and essential assumption plaintiff counsel should make when preparing a case. Regardless of the cause of action, assume that the plaintiff and every friendly known witness has a history that, if known, will adversely affect the ultimate outcome. Until proven otherwise through the use of public records and interviews, all of which should occur pre-suit outside of formal discovery, remain vigilant in learning everything to know about the client and witnesses that may be called on throughout the litigation. Background checks, civil, criminal and family court files all will either confirm a cautiously optimistic impression of the plaintiff, or prepare to deal with the collateral—usually irrelevant, but always distracting—attacks upon the person of your client when the time comes. The same exercise is performed upon all anticipated defendants.
This pregame ritual requires an attorney/client relationship that exceeds the formality of the client contract. As advocates, attorneys should remain focused on the end game, but along the way, the attorney-client relationship must be a candidly safe space. Building the trust necessary to avoid surprises down the line involves introducing other staff upon initiation of the attorney-client relationship. My assistant regularly phones witnesses and clients, even when no information is needed and when no deadlines are looming. This process signals to the client the reality that we are working hard for them, and increases the probability that we will learn in advance of any issues that may prove troublesome down the road.
Once in suit, the rules of discovery and formal deadlines begin to take hold of an attorney’s case building efforts, which makes the “informal” pre-suit information gathering process all the more important. As such, guard against rushing into suit. The time to mercilessly press for a special set trial begins after committing to the case armed with all reasonably available information and background materials on everyone involved.
Attorneys know in advance those materials that will be asked of the clients in standard discovery requests, but shouldn’t attorneys have learned as much as possible about the defendant and possible witnesses before filing suit? Filing suit is the moment in which we regain the tactical edge, because together with the complaint, targeted discovery requests based on information and materials we learned pre-suit ensure the defendant is responding to us rather than the other way around. And when the inevitable discovery is propounded upon the client, staff and attorney time is not wasted gathering materials and information that should have been in their possession from the beginning.
Whether an automobile accident, premises liability, medical negligence or product liability case, pre-suit research should inform attorneys of obstacles to success, and tools available to address those challenges as they arise. The internet is a tremendous resource, which should be used to identify the original source materials available for more detailed exploration. For example, in a premises liability case at a shopping mall, an attorney may not have pre-suit access to the leases between the various merchants and the management company or landowner. But if applicable to the facts of the case, the county record department will have any relevant easements pertaining to the property on file, often with supporting materials that one would not expect to find in a clerk’s office, including correspondence between landlords and tenants. In a dram shop case, the state licensing board for alcohol permits will have submissions from the applicant in order to have obtained the license to serve alcohol. The documents may include extensive correspondence by the soon-to-be defendant regarding the scale and scope of the intended use of that license, prior negative incidents, and attorneys may be surprised by the detailed photographs or schematic drawings of the establishment.
This pre-suit effort likely will not deliver a case on a silver platter. It may not ultimately provide the silver bullet at the first key deposition, where information obtained outside of discovery truly has the ability to surprise opposing counsel. But those attorneys who have dug as deeply as possible into all foreseeable issues and contingencies pre-suit will more efficiently prosecute the case and be ready to confidently select a jury the first time the case is up at calendar call. And, if an attorney by chance does find that silver bullet before the case is even filed, all the better.
Opa Locka, Florida – The owners of the Top Value Supermarket in Opa Locka have agreed to a payout of $1 million to the Estate of Miguel Pilotos, who was gunned down on the property during a robbery Aug. 21, 2013.
The 71-year-old man was simply picking up groceries when he was shot at the supermarket located on Northwest 137th street and northwest 27th avenue. The crime was caught on camera. The gunman rode up to the victim’s car on a bicycle and pulled out his weapon and shot the husband and father in the neck. Pilotos, who had under $20 on him when he was killed, had been with his wife Aleida for 25 years. He emigrated from Cuba 19 years ago.
The lawyer for the Pilotos family, Todd Michaels of The Haggard Law Firm, says the crime was predictable and preventable. “At the time of his murder, Miguel Pilotos was the third Top Value customer robbed and shot and the second one killed in that parking lot, in six months” says Michaels. He adds “despite the previous crimes, and the widespread knowledge the business was located in a high-crime area, the supermarket did not alter security in the parking lot in any way.”
In my experience, the most common condition in any premises liability case is the lack of guardianship of the property. In most instances, the property owner and/or manager fails to put in place policies and procedures that ensure that the premises is kept in a reasonably safe condition. For example, in many negligent security cases it becomes obvious that the owner and management fail to do anything that assesses violent crime occurring at the property. Without knowing what type of crime is happening, it is nearly impossible to know what type of security measures are needed. How can the owner make decisions about access control, manned security, and surveillance cameras, if they have failed to gather the crime statistics for the property and the surrounding area? The answer is simple, they do not know and consequently violent crime continues to victimize the property’s guests and invitees. In slip and fall cases, many properties fail to ensure that their employees follow the internal policies and procedures to maintain the property in a safe manner. This leads to dangerous conditions being left on the property for an unacceptable amount of time.
If property owners simply prepare policies and procedures for their employees to follow and have appropriate supervision to ensure that the policies and procedures are being followed, then the most dangerous conditions would cease to exist. Obviously, financial considerations come into play for the property owners. In developing a premises liability case, it is important to discover exactly what property owners are failing to do and why they are failing to do it. Jurors do not appreciate property owners turning a blind eye and pleading ignorance. Jurors also do not accept that the owners do not want to put the necessary resources (money) into the property to make it safe.
Just today, my partner Todd Michaels, secured a $2.65 million dollar verdict in a negligent security case in Clay County, Florida. The facts of the case demonstrated that the property knew that there was a upswing in crime at the property. Instead of being proactive, the property owner allowed the access control gates to remain broken for over 6 months. The property owner’s failure caused the death of our client during a burglary attempt to his sister’s home. This is a prime example of how juries will find for a victim in light of a property owner refusing to make their property safe.
As discussed, when preparing a premises liability case, it is extremely important to go through what policies and procedures a property owner has put into place and whether they are being followed. Just as important is why a property owner is failing to take the reasonable steps to make sure that the property is safe. Get all written policies and procedures as soon as possible – send written discovery requesting this information with the filing of the Complaint. Follow this with detailed depositions of management and the property employees. Armed with this information, it will become easy to show that the property owner and/or management dug their head in the sand and were at fault for your client’s injury or death.
The Haggard Law Firm’s William Haggard, Michael Haggard, Douglas McCarron, Christopher Marlowe, Todd Michaels and James Blecke have all been named to the 2016 Super Lawyers List.
Super Lawyers is a rating service of outstanding lawyers from more than 70 practice areas who have attained a high-degree of peer recognition and professional achievement.
The patented selection process includes independent research, peer nominations, and peer evaluations.
The Haggard Law Firm’s Todd Michaels has been selected as the Chair of the Florida Justice Association’s Rental Car Committee.
The Committee is responsible for drafting any proactive legislation that the FJA would like to pursue, assist staff in drafting position papers and amendments and to act as an advisory group during the state’s legislative session on issues within the expertise of its members.
Michaels is currently an FJA board member, is on the organization’s executive committee and is the Miami-Dade County Vanguard Chair .
The FJA is dedicated to strengthening and upholding Florida’s civil justice system and protecting the rights of Florida’s citizens and consumers.
The FJA believes that all Floridians benefit when deserving individuals have a fair chance to seek justice in our state’s courts and that Florida’s consumers are made safer when large corporations and industries are held to a high ethical standard and accept fair responsibility for their actions.
FJA works in the legislative, political and public arenas to ensure that Floridians know and understand the importance of their rights to justice and to make certain that these rights, which are at the very core of what it means to be American, are safeguarded and protected.
When you argue that your client’s injuries could have been prevented through the use of reasonable security measures, the defendant will claim those measures are excessive or unnecessary. So what are reasonable measures, and how can you help the jury view the case through your eyes? You must first go to the crime scene and begin reviewing any security efforts that the defendant undertook.
A crucial part of evidence development in these cases is examining the premises and putting the security measures into context. For example, a client was stabbed to death in his aunt’s apartment complex parking lot as he went to the vending machines near the community swimming pool.1 The complex gave a rent-free unit to a courtesy security officer who was also a local police officer and claimed to perform three daily patrols around the property with an enormous dog and a pistol. She also submitted observation reports to management. I was deflated by this proactive security regime until the officer and on-site managers were deposed.
Through public record requests, I obtained the officer’s call schedule for her official police duties for the previous three years. The three daily patrols she claimed she conducted could not be reconciled with her documented obligations for the city police department. The nuisance crimes of vandalism and drug use at the community swimming pool were incompatible with her insistence that once she locked the common area amenities at night, the property was under control. And somehow her fellow officers failed to inform her of four robberies and a carjacking that occurred at the complex while she lived there. At trial, the plaintiff’s counsel was able to expose this façade, and the jury found the complex was 100 percent liable.
In another case, my client was shot in the face at a gas station near the Miami-Dade County Fairgrounds during the annual fair. My first few visits to the property were unremarkable, so I wondered how we could convince any jury that this ordinary gas station should have employed security. So we waited to visit again until the next year’s county fair.
By comparing surveillance video from a normal Friday night with video from the same time and date during the following year’s county fair, we were able to show the massive increase in foot and vehicle traffic during the fair. We did not advocate that there was anything wrong with the gas station itself – but we explained that for two weeks each year, it assumed an entirely different criminal profile, and increased security measures should have been deployed. Understanding your site will help you stay focused on the defendant’s duty to appreciate the foreseeable risk and act on it.
(Pictured: Attorney Christopher Marlowe)
Sometimes, when security is compromised, there will be a debate about whether armed or unarmed security was appropriate for a property. The jury is unlikely to punish a defendant for choosing unarmed over armed guards if the choice was based on intelligence and made after informed deliberations.
Other security decisions become central to the case. Premises owners and managers often use security vendors, who make recommendations for protecting the property against crime. The vendor invariably will have suggested implementing the most comprehensive security system, but the defendant chose a lesser program due to cost. Driving a wedge between the vendor and the property manager becomes very important, and you can do this with the assistance of either entity’s former employees. Defendants usually are not on the same page as their vendors about crime on the premises, the necessary remedies, or the rationale for the choices made.
Familiarity with crimes that occurred on the property is fundamental. Do not rely on crime statistics or grids. Read every police report from the property, going back at least three years from your client’s assault. What may appear to be a simple property crime can yield the greatest notice and foreseeability witnesses. For example, a police report showing theft of a cell phone from a vehicle may appear trivial and unrelated on its face. However, the victim of that property crime often will have reported it to management and felt violated by that intrusion, especially if it happened more than once. The best witness regarding notice of on-premises crimes may be a robbery victim who constantly complained to management.
As the defendant tries to distract your attention from the core issues, refocus the case on specific criminal incidents and what the defendant failed to do in response to each. Make sure to use police reports when deposing the defendant – it will force them to admit, repeatedly, that they either did not know of the crime or that they did not make any changes in response to it. Specific crimes will help you show the jury that your case is not about crime generally or in the city where the property is located – it is about crime on this specific property.
Negligent security cases can consume thousands of hours from inception to conclusion. You must contend with both criminal and civil investigations, witnesses who may reasonably fear retribution, properties in crime-ridden areas, and even clients whose presence at the time of the incident concerns jurors. To get past these difficulties, it is crucial to maintain your focus on proving that the defendant’s security measures were inadequate.
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Notes:
1. Almaguer v. MIG Pines Dev., Ltd., No. 08-50972 CA 21 (Fla., Broward Co. Cir., Mar. 25, 2010).
rs represent virtually every industry in the public and private sectors, and organizations of all sizes. From entry-level managers to CSOs to CEOs, from security veterans to consultants and those transitioning from law enforcement or the military, the ASIS community is global and diverse. More than 20,000 industry professionals are expected to attend the conference.
