Casino can’t be sued for gambler’s off-site holdup

A Rhode Island casino had no duty to prevent the robbery of a gambler who claimed criminals followed him from the premises before accosting him at a service station where he stopped on his way home, a U.S. District Court judge has ruled.

The plaintiff gambler was robbed in 2021 after leaving Bally’s Twin River Casino in Lincoln. Edward Peduto alleged the perpetrators identified him as a potential target on the premises and then followed him when he left the casino to drive to his home in Wakefield, Massachusetts.

The robbery itself occurred when the plaintiff stopped at a service plaza in North Lexington, approximately 50 miles from the defendant’s casino.

The plaintiff sued the owner of the casino, UTGR, Inc., for negligence in Massachusetts federal court, alleging the casino had a duty to prevent the robbery given evidence security cameras caught his assailants following him from the gaming floor as well as evidence that the defendant was aware of a number of prior similar robberies of patrons.

But Judge Allison D. Burroughs granted the defendant’s motion to dismiss, concluding the harm suffered by the plaintiff was not reasonably foreseeable.

“While Plaintiff makes much ado about prior robberies and violent incidents ‘at or near’ Twin River to establish foreseeability, Plaintiff points to no authority, and the Court is not aware of any, that establishes that notice of such prior incidents at or near a premises imposes on a business a sweeping duty to prevent third-party harm to customers who have voluntarily traveled miles from the premises, particularly without any indicia of foreseeability while the customer was on premises,” Burroughs wrote.

The eight-page decision is Peduto v. UTGR, Inc., Lawyers Weekly No. 02-536-24.

‘Fascinating fact pattern’

Neither the plaintiff’s attorney, Martin C. Winstead of Hanover, nor defense counsel Armando E. Batastini of Providence, responded to requests for comment.

Newton personal injury lawyer Matthew J. Fogelman said the case presented a “fascinating fact pattern.”

“I can understand the court’s reluctance [to recognize a duty of care], particularly where the robbery happened so far away from the casino’s property,” Fogelman said. “A stronger case could be made if the crime had happened on the casino’s property.”

[If the court recognized a duty of care here,] what would stop there from being automatic liability [for the robbery of someone] walking out of a bank or some other place associated with violence or criminal activity which attracts lots of people?

On the other hand, Fogelman said that he could see a duty of care recognized in a similar case under a different set of facts.

“If the casino had information that would go toward protecting patrons’ safety, then there easily could be some obligation toward making patrons aware of that,” he said. “The underlying point is, if the business has information [about a threat] that patrons don’t have, they really shouldn’t sit on that information.”

Patrick M. Hanley represents gaming industry clients as part of his Boston litigation practice. Even though other sectors of the economy may be moving toward cashless transactions, Hanley said there is still a “ton of cash” that goes in and out of casinos and that criminals might try to target gamblers, as alleged by the plaintiff.

But Hanley agreed with Burroughs’ ruling that there was no basis for holding the casino liable. In particular, he said there was no reason to conclude that the casino in any way contributed to the criminal activity at issue in the case.

“Casinos do handle lots and lots of money,” he said. “But there are also lots and lots of people who may be vulnerable for any number of reasons. What’s the difference between a casino and a bank or some other place connected with money? [If the court recognized a duty of care here,] what would stop there from being automatic liability [for the robbery of someone] walking out of a bank or some other place associated with violence or criminal activity which attracts lots of people?”

Hanley also rejected any notion that the casino had a duty to warn in the case.

“This is an adult activity,” he said. “If you’re carrying around a lot of money, there’s a reason to worry you could be targeted.”

Boston personal injury attorney Nicholas B. Carter expressed concern that the judge took an overly narrow approach in her duty-of-care analysis.

“The indication from this decision is that there is a lot of criminal activity at the casino,” Carter said. “The casino is therefore on notice and needs to be providing extra security measures. If they knew this kind of activity was happening where criminals were following casino patrons to some off-premises location where they robbed them, they probably have some duty to take measures to try to stop that, and that would include better measures to keep these people out of the casino and perhaps better measures to intervene and alert customers as they are leaving.”

Targeted robbery?

According to the plaintiff’s amended complaint, he drove to the casino on Aug. 29, 2021, “for the purpose of enjoying the facility as a paying customer.” Later, he returned to his vehicle to drive home.

The complaint states that “unbeknownst to the Plaintiff, he was followed from inside the Casino to the parking lot by individuals who then followed his vehicle.”

The plaintiff alleged that security cameras at the casino captured the people who followed him.

“[O]n information and belief, the security video clearly shows that the Plaintiff was not voluntarily accompanied by or aware of the presence of the eventual assailants,” the complaint states.

On the drive home, the plaintiff stopped at a service station.

“[A]t that time, the individuals who had followed the Plaintiff approached his vehicle, brutally assaulted and robbed the Plaintiff,” the complaint states.

The plaintiff alleged that he suffered severe and permanent injuries in the attack, incurring medical bills in excess of $46,212. But the complaint makes no mention of any money stolen from the plaintiff during the course of the robbery.

According to the plaintiff, the defendant was aware that “numerous robberies” of patrons had taken place prior to his robbery.

“[P]olice records show that at least eight robberies transpired at or near the Premises involving customers of the Defendant who were, in some instances, followed from the casino floor and then assaulted, from the period January 2019 to the time of the Incident,” the complaint states. “[P]olice records show that at least 76 other violent incidents occurred at the Premises during the period January 2019 to the time of the Incident.”

The plaintiff filed his original complaint for negligence in May 2024. In an amended complaint, he alleged the defendant: (1) had “actual and/or constructive knowledge of violence, including robbery,” against its customers; (2) had reason to anticipate that a patron might be subjected to a violent incident as a result of visiting the premises; and (3) breached its duty of care by failing to “properly monitor the actions of persons at the Casino” and by failing to provide adequate security.

The defendant moved to dismiss for failure to state a claim. The defendant argued that the attack on the plaintiff was not reasonably foreseeable, and, therefore, the casino did not owe him a duty of care as a matter of law.

Case dismissed

Burroughs first noted that the parties in their respective briefs cited both Massachusetts and Rhode Island caselaw.

She recognized that the negligence law of both states is similar with respect to the analysis of foreseeability to determine whether a duty is owed to prevent the criminal acts of third parties. Given that neither party raised an objection and there was no need to make a choice-of-law determination at such an early stage of the case, Burroughs chose to apply the law of Massachusetts in her analysis.

“With regard to a business, although business owners can, in some circumstances, owe a duty to patrons ‘to use reasonable care to prevent injury to [them] by third persons,’ this duty is generally limited to patrons at or near the premises, and, even then, only to prevent reasonably foreseeable harm,” Burroughs wrote. “Thus, although the occurrence of prior, similar criminal acts at or near the premises can be relevant when considering the issue of foreseeability, it is not dispositive. ‘Fundamentally, the existence of a duty of care depends upon the foreseeability of a risk of harm that the defendant has an ability to prevent.’”

Burroughs concluded that the allegations in the amended complaint failed to support a claim of negligence because the plaintiff failed to plead facts from which she could find the defendant owed him a duty.

“The facts of the attack, while regrettable, are far removed from the rare circumstances under which Massachusetts courts have found that owners owed patrons a duty of care to prevent third-party criminal conduct, given that the attack having occurred approximately fifty miles from Defendant’s premises, well away from Defendant’s security or control,” Burroughs wrote.

Moreover, she found it unclear from the face of the complaint what, if anything, the defendant could or should have done to prevent the attack while the plaintiff was at or near the casino.

“The Amended Complaint pleads, at most, that Defendant’s security cameras caught Plaintiff and other individuals exiting the casino around the same time, without incident,” she wrote. “It does not allege that the would-be assailants did anything unlawful in the casino or in the parking lot, or that, other than happening to exit the casino around the same time as Plaintiff, they did anything to put anyone monitoring those security cameras on notice that they intended Plaintiff any harm.”

Accordingly, she granted the defendant’s motion, specifying the dismissal was without prejudice.