Sexual assault cases may include more third-party suits
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“I feel safe. We’re out in the suburbs,” said Erica Weiss, a first-year nursing student at St. Charles Community College, who was introduced to the concept of third-party and premises liability in connection to assault cases for the first time last week. Weiss, like most people, has assumed the place where she spends a large portion of her day has taken measures to protect her, other students, staff and faculty members from becoming victims of crime including sexual assault. It is not an unreasonable assumption, nor is it uncommon for people who frequent not only educational facilities, but hospitals, shopping malls, places of employment and even apartment complexes, to believe the managers of those properties have taken measures to keep their patrons safe. Yet, sometimes that trust can be unintentionally betrayed, and liability can fall on the third parties as hard, if not financially harder, than it does on the perpetrators of crime. According to St. Louis lawyer Jim O’Leary, sexual assault is a crime that not only impacts an attacker and a victim, but increasingly is involving civil litigation against property owners who fail to maintain an expected level of safety for their patrons. In a case last month, a St. Louis woman was sexually assaulted inside her apartment after the attacker, who was first found unfit to stand trial and later died in a mental hospital, gained access to the multi-unit building by way of a coal chute and then entered her home by way of… Source : accessmylibrary.com |