Behr v. RB Minneapolis Management, LLC

Background

Dominique and Tessa Behr stayed at the Radisson Blu Downtown Minneapolis Hotel from February 19 to February 20, 2021. According to their amended complaint, five males entered their room after a G4S security guard admitted them to the hotel when one of them presented what may have been a room key. The men hid in the room, assaulted the Behrs for several hours, and shot Tessa Behr multiple times. The amended complaint alleged that no hotel or security employee noticed or stopped the assaults.

The Behrs asserted negligence claims against Radisson Hotels Management Company, LLC, which the opinion describes as the hotel’s successor in liability, and G4S Secure Solutions (USA), Inc., the security-services provider. The opinion understood the amended complaint to assert six theories: Radisson’s liability as an innkeeper; Radisson’s liability based on its own conduct; negligence per se based on alleged statutory and hotel-policy violations; G4S’s responsibility for negligent work by its hotel-based employees under respondeat superior, meaning employer responsibility for an employee’s tort within the scope of employment; negligent hiring, supervision, and retention by G4S; and Radisson’s derivative liability for G4S under apparent authority.

Motions and pleading standard

Radisson moved to dismiss under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 12(b)(6), which tests whether a complaint states a legally sufficient claim. G4S moved for judgment on the pleadings under Rule 12(c), a procedure used when the pleadings leave no material factual issue and the moving party is entitled to judgment as a matter of law. The court applied the same basic standard to both motions: accepting the complaint’s factual allegations as true and asking whether they plausibly showed entitlement to relief.

The defendants argued that police records referenced in the complaint should be treated as incorporated into the pleading. The court rejected that argument. It found that the complaint referred to the records only for the limited purpose of identifying a G4S employee named “Mobley,” not for all purposes, and that the defendants sought to use the records to contradict the complaint’s allegations. The court therefore decided the motions based on the amended complaint and reasonable inferences from it.

Analysis

Under Minnesota law, a person ordinarily has no duty to protect another from harm caused by a third party. Exceptions can apply when a special relationship exists and the harm was foreseeable, or when the defendant’s own conduct created a foreseeable risk. The court recognized that hotels have a special relationship with their guests and generally must take reasonable steps to protect guests from foreseeable dangers.

The court held that the amended complaint did not plausibly allege that the attacks were foreseeable to Radisson. It focused on the specific chain of events leading to the assaults, rather than on general risks of crime at hotels. The complaint alleged that a group entered the hotel, a G4S employee asked whether they had a room key, and one man presented what may have been a room key. It did not allege that the men were visibly intoxicated, carried visible weapons, made threats, acted in a threatening or harassing way, or had known criminal histories or other conduct showing an immediate danger. The allegations about crime near the hotel, prior police calls, and the general risk posed by intruders did not establish that these particular attacks were reasonably foreseeable.

The court also rejected Radisson’s own-conduct theory. The complaint’s allegations concerned failures to hire, train, supervise, retain, or take particular security measures. The court characterized those alleged failures as nonfeasance, meaning passive inaction or a failure to protect others, rather than misfeasance, meaning active misconduct that causes injury. It also found the allegations about Radisson’s hiring, training, supervision, and retention practices too general and conclusory to meet the plausibility standard.

The negligence-per-se theories also failed. Negligence per se is ordinary negligence based on violating a statute that protects the injured person from the type of harm suffered. The complaint did not allege that Radisson violated Minnesota’s hotel employee training statute concerning sex trafficking, and the court found that statute was not intended to prevent the assaults alleged here. The complaint also did not adequately allege a violation of the hotel guest-registration statute. Even assuming a registration violation, the court found no plausible causal connection between that violation and the Behrs’ injuries because the criminal acts were not reasonably foreseeable. Finally, the hotel’s internal occupancy policy did not establish negligence per se because an internal policy does not have the force of law.

The claims against G4S failed for related reasons. A security company that undertakes to perform a property owner’s duty may owe a duty to people the service is intended to protect, but that duty still depends on foreseeable injury. The court found the attacks were not plausibly alleged to be foreseeable. The negligent-hiring and negligent-retention theories were deficient because the complaint did not allege that a G4S employee committed an intentional tort. The negligent-supervision theory was deficient because the complaint did not explain why it should have been foreseeable that G4S employees would negligently perform their duties, and the alleged conduct consisted of failures to act. Because the amended complaint did not plausibly state a negligence claim against G4S, the derivative apparent-authority claim against Radisson also failed.

Disposition

Judge Eric C. Tostrud granted Radisson’s Motion to Dismiss and granted G4S’s Motion for Judgment on the Pleadings. The court dismissed the amended complaint without prejudice and gave the Behrs permission, but not a requirement, to file a second amended complaint on or before May 30, 2025. If they did not do so by that deadline, the court stated that the amended complaint would be dismissed with prejudice and judgment would be entered.