Our Houston personal injury lawyers were a bit shocked to hear about a July loss prevention incident at a local Wal*Mart store. An employee on the loss prevention team apparently utilized an innovative and dangerous new strategy to deter a shopper he believed might have been shoplifting.
Allegedly the employee, 33-year-old Lance Jason Ferguson, accused a customer that had been looking at DVDs and video games of stealing and threatened to whip him. Already, his actions sound well outside the scope of standard retail loss prevention practice.
When the customer left the store, Ferguson followed him. Wal*Mart’s own surveillance videos show Ferguson leaving the store’s parking lot in a vehicle that resembles the customer’s description of one that struck him as he was walking home.
The customer has reportedly stated that while he was in the 11500 block of the Gulf Freeway, a vehicle came up behind him and ran into him. The shopper rolled up onto the car’s hood, then back onto the ground. The customer has alleged that Lance Jason Ferguson then exited the vehicle and told him not to return to the store and that Ferguson stepped closer to him in a way that could have seemed threatening.
When the customer later made it home, his mother took him to the hospital to be treated for leg, back, and side injuries. Our Houston personal injury lawyers note that surveillance videos show Ferguson returning to Wal*Mart about 10 minutes after leaving. (Source: click2houston.com, 8/9/2012)
The Houston personal injury lawyers at Denena & Points generally support reasonable loss prevention efforts on the part of retail stores. After all, shoplifting ultimately costs all of us. But Ferguson’s rather innovative and overly enthusiastic approach to the job goes far beyond what we’d consider reasonable. The law does not permit store employees to deliberately run over even those individuals who have actually been caught and convicted for shoplifting.
Imagine if you had to face the threat of such aggressive loss prevention tactics every time you went shopping. I’d probably stop shopping and order everything online. For delivery to a P.O. box in another neighborhood.
And news accounts seem to indicate that the customer Ferguson followed didn’t even take anything from the store. Exiting the store, following a customer, and then running him down with a car does not deter shoplifting so much as it just plain deters shopping at the store.
Even if Ferguson’s exceedingly aggressive loss prevention strategy could have saved the cost of a few DVDs and video games, that savings could be far outweighed by the costs of personal injury litigation and judgments that the store might face after the employee has been shown to have deliberately run over a customer.
Our Houston personal injury lawyers emphasize that the unfortunate customer that drew Ferguson’s excessive wrath might be eligible for a full financial recovery for the value of the harms he suffered from the July incident. The monetary damages for which the customer might be eligible could include: his medical expenses, costs of further medical care and rehabilitation required, pain and suffering, emotional and mental distress, and other losses and injuries related to the traumatic confrontation, including punitive damages.
Lance Jason Ferguson has been charged with aggravated assault. His employer might ultimately be charged with the costs of the damages he caused with the July loss prevention incident. While we’re pretty sure Ferguson’s tactics were never part of his employee-training program, employers can sometimes be held vicariously liable for the damages their employees produce.
Indeed, employers increasingly are following a trend to ban cell phone among their employees while they’re driving. These employers want to avoid vicarious liability for damages caused by employees’ distracted driving accidents. Probably none of these employers has yet thought to add a ban against running over their customers to the employee manuals. We wonder how many of them might be drafting such prohibitions even now?
Learn more about employer vicarious liability for accident injuries. Click on this article by our Board Certified Houston personal injury lawyers.