Johnson v. Starbucks Corporation

Background

Michael Johnson brought a negligence action against Starbucks Corporation d/b/a Starbucks Coffee Company for injuries he suffered during a June 28, 2019 assault at Starbucks’s Union Square store in New York. Another patron yelled at Johnson and then punched and kicked him near the store’s restroom. Johnson alleged that Starbucks failed to take reasonable security measures to protect patrons from foreseeable violence.

Starbucks moved for summary judgment. Summary judgment is a decision without a trial when the evidence shows that no reasonable jury could find for the opposing party. Starbucks argued that the evidence could not establish that the assault was foreseeable. Johnson opposed the motion, relying on prior physical fights at the store, violence by customers against employees, the store’s location below a methadone outpatient clinic, employees’ security concerns, and Starbucks’s restroom-access policy.

Legal standard

Applying New York law, the court explained that a negligence claim requires a duty, a breach of that duty, and an injury proximately caused by the breach. A public establishment generally has no duty to protect patrons from unforeseeable and unexpected assaults, but it may have a duty to control third parties when it has an opportunity to do so and is reasonably aware that control is needed.

Foreseeability defines the scope of that duty. A plaintiff does not have to show that exactly the same crime occurred previously or that a prior incident happened in exactly the same way. The relevant question is whether the earlier incidents were sufficiently similar and sufficiently connected to the later harm to support a finding that the harm was reasonably foreseeable.

Court’s analysis

The court identified evidence that employees had observed multiple physical fights inside the Union Square store. It also considered evidence that customers had attempted to punch or spit on an employee and had thrown coffee at an employee. Although Starbucks argued these events were too different from Johnson’s attack, the court concluded that a reasonable jury could view them as evidence of a general risk of assaultive behavior in the store.

The court also considered evidence about the store’s location immediately below a methadone outpatient clinic. A store manager testified that people sometimes came from the clinic into the store and fought over drugs. The court stated that Johnson did not need to prove that his assailant was connected to the clinic or that the earlier violence had exactly the same motive or method.

Additional evidence showed that some employees felt unsafe, repeatedly requested more security, and believed the store needed additional security measures. The court noted that purely verbal confrontations, standing alone, were not sufficiently similar to the physical assault, and it did not rely on testimony about hundreds of threats where the record did not show that they involved force or violence.

The court also addressed the incident log produced by Starbucks. Although the log did not record earlier physical confrontations, witnesses testified that employees did not consistently prepare incident reports and that reports were made only in limited circumstances. The court therefore concluded that the log did not eliminate the significance of the witnesses’ testimony about prior fights.

Holding and disposition

The court held that the evidence created a genuine factual dispute about whether the assault on Johnson was foreseeable. Because a reasonable jury could find for either Johnson or Starbucks on that issue, Starbucks had not shown that it was entitled to judgment without a trial.

The court denied Starbucks’s motion for summary judgment and directed that the case proceed to trial. The court did not finally determine whether Starbucks breached a duty or whether its conduct proximately caused Johnson’s injuries. It stated that the parties had not fully addressed those issues in the summary-judgment briefing and that the denial only meant that the record contained enough evidence for a jury to find for Johnson.