Store Employees Not Bound to Obey Robbers, Court Says

SAN FRANCISCO — Store employees have no legal duty to accede to an armed robber’s demands for money, even if the assailant has a gun to a customer’s head, the California Supreme Court held Monday.

In a 4-to-3 decision, the state high court reversed a Court of Appeal ruling that made stores potentially liable for the actions of their employees in such situations.

“The public as a whole is much better served if would-be robbers are deterred by knowledge that their victims have no legal duty to comply” with their demands, Justice Marvin Baxter wrote for the majority.

The ruling stems from a lawsuit filed against Kentucky Fried Chicken by Kathy Brown, 44, who was a customer at the chain’s Redondo Beach restaurant in 1993 when she was seized and held at gunpoint.

Brown gave the assailant her wallet, but the cashier initially refused to obey the robber’s command to empty the cash register. Instead, the cashier told him that she had to go to the back of the restaurant for the key.

The robber shoved his gun harder into Brown’s back and told the clerk to “quit playing games” or he would shoot Brown. Brown, who believed she was going to die, screamed at the cashier to give the robber the money.

After about two minutes the clerk finally complied, and the robber fled with the money. He was never caught.

Brown, an apartment manager, sought damages for emotional distress, hospital and medical expenses, loss of wages and loss of earning capacity.

But lawyers for Kentucky Fried Chicken argued that the restaurant was not required to protect Brown against violent criminal acts.

“While this court has not expressly considered the duty of a landowner or occupier whose premises are open to the public when faced with an armed robber,” Baxter wrote, “no state has held that the law imposes a duty to comply with a robber’s demands.”

Baxter, however, stressed that the court might reach a different conclusion if a store proprietor or employee physically resisted a robber and provoked violence. The cashier’s hesitation to obey was not “active resistance,” he said.

Justices Stanley Mosk, Joyce L. Kennard and Kathryn Mickle Werdegar dissented. Mosk complained that the court’s ruling will mean that a business owner need never comply with a robber’s demands when customers are present.

Kennard, in a dissent joined by Werdegar, said she agreed with the majority that the restaurant has a duty to take reasonable steps to protect patrons from foreseeable assault.

But Kennard said a jury should be allowed to decide whether the restaurant violated that duty when the clerk initially refused to open the cash register.

Richard F. G. Thomas, a Hermosa Beach lawyer who represented Brown, said she was treated for heart palpitations after the incident and suffered a bruise in her back from the gun.

The decision means that a robber “can shoot you, the next person and 10 people in a row while the cashier says, ‘No, I am not going to give you the money,’ ” Thomas said. “Under this opinion, there is no liability.”

He expressed concern that fast-food restaurants and minimarkets may discontinue programs that teach workers not to resist robbers’ demands.

But Edwin B. Brown, a lawyer for Kentucky Fried Chicken, said the chain and other outlets will continue such training because no one wants a patron or an employee to get hurt.

“They don’t want trouble,” Brown said. “But inevitably, what happens is you have young people working as cashiers and when they get panicky, it is not uncommon for them to run away or to close the register.”