Negligent Security and Client Safety

Your clients (and family) must be protected, safe and secure, at shopping centers, apartments, gas stations, office buildings and hotels, including parking lots/garages and any commercial property where they may be vulnerable to crime.  Leesfield & Partners represents victims who have been attacked, abused, injured or killed because security was inadequate. We are on the legislative and civil justice forefront of public safety.

MOST COMMON CRIME SCENES:

• Shopping malls/strip malls
• Vacation and travel locations
• Apartment complexes and other commercial properties
• Bars, restaurants and clubs
• Cruise ships
• Gas Stations
• Hotels and lodging accommodations
• Resorts, theme and amusement parks
• Sporting events
• College Campuses
• Bank ATM’s

Daily, we see breaches of safety and security endangering the public.  Crime, serious injury, sexual abuse, unexpected assaults and harm producing events can be avoided or reduced by the following common sense practices to deter crime.

WAYS TO PROTECT YOUR CLIENTS AND FAMILY AGAINST CRIMINAL HARM: 

• Your cell phone can save your life.  Carry it with you at all times.  Use the Emergency SOS and Brightest Flashlight Apps on your cell phone. Program your cell phone for location discovery.
• Report suspicious persons or incidents to the police immediately.
• Deterrents to burglars:
  • Commercial and residential monitored alarm systems
  • Dogs
  • Security cameras
  • Lighting
  • Surveillance signs
• When walking or jogging alone, carry a whistle or some other noise-making device;
• When using an ATM, opt for a drive-thru or in a well-lighted, open space, high traffic area, such as shopping malls.  Be ready to transact your business, be alert to your surroundings and leave quickly when transaction is completed;
• Encourage your neighbors and homeowners’ associations to initiate a crime watch group as well as conducting background screening on new residents.   Demand good lighting in your community;
• At work, request your employer to do employee background screening on new hires to help maintain a safer workplace;
• Self-defense classes can improve confidence in your ability to avoid physical conflict and defend yourself, if necessary.

VALUABLE ADVICE TO PROTECT THE VULNERABLE FROM SEXUAL ABUSE AND MOLESTATION:

Our 45-year litigation history underscores how vulnerable children can be.  When a prestigious overnight camp ignored apparent pedophile activity, an $8.6 million recovery was obtained for the camp owners’ refusal to recognize a counselor’s disturbed behavior.

For years, one of Florida’s most prestigious private high schools allowed to molest, harass and sexually abuse young boys in a serial manner, requiring the school to pay a multi-million dollar reparation.

Leesfield & Partners successfully represented an unaccompanied minor airline passenger placed in the custody of flight attendants.  During the flight, a deviant passenger covered her and himself with a blanket and proceeded to molest her.  A confidential recovery was obtained against the airline.

CHILDREN MUST BE ALERTED TO UNUSUAL AND UNCOMFORTABLE BEHAVIOR:

• Don’t be embarrassed to speak to your children about their personal space and rights to their own bodies
• Help them understand that no one, not even a relative or authority figure, is allowed to touch them in a way that makes them uncomfortable.
• Encourage conversation and listen to their concerns and observe unspoken discomfort.
• Keep alert to behavioral and emotional signs indicative of sexual abuse:
  • Increased anxiety and sudden hostility
  • Excessive talk about sexual topics
  • Not talking as much as usual
  • Regressive behaviors (thumb sucking or bed wetting)
  • Spending an unusual amount of time alone
  • Decrease in confidence or self-image
  • Self-harming behaviors
  • Excessive worry or fearfulness
  • Loss of interest in school, activities and friends
  • Change in eating habits

Sadly, incidents involving the boy scouts, churches, schools, camps, daycare centers, parks and child gathering places are so common that our Firm has now completed hundreds of cases involving tragic child molestation.

SELECT RESULTS FOR NEGLIGENT SECURITY RECOVERIES BY Leesfield & Partners

Crime detection is everyone’s responsibility.  Now more than ever, “if you see something, say something.”  Here are just a few cases where the failure to do so resulted in recovery:

• $40.5 million verdict for an assault in an unlit parking garage
• $3 million settlement for a paraplegic injuries to a client shot at an unguarded ATM
• $1 million settlement from a $25,000 insurance policy for an unprovoked attack
• $1.5 milion award to a cruise ship passenger who was sexually assaulted by a crew member in her cabin
• $1.6 million recovery against a supermarket chain for its failure to provide security guards for senior citizens
• $1.138 million settlement for store employee raped and robbed during daylight hours where security had been reduced
• $900,000 bar assault to a 24-year-old patron for inadequate security
• $685,000 mediation result for the family of a gas station worker killed in a high crime area with no security
• $500,000 award to the family of a 57-year-old man beaten to death at a convenience food market
• $1 million wrongful death of college student.  No warning of dangerous campus neighborhood
• $1.045 million settlement for young woman raped in a hotel in Key West
• $3.2 million recovery for a foreign college student attacked at a dormitory building resulting in neurological injuries and paralysis.  No warning about neighborhood
• Confidential recovery for airline failing to protect unaccompanied minor passenger