Sigmund v. Starwood Urban Retail VI, LLC, No. 08-7137
Sigmund v. Starwood Urban Retail VI, LLC, No. 08-7137, involved an action against the owners of a parking garage where plaintiff was injured by a car bombing. The court affirmed summary judgment for defendants, on the ground that the accidental victim of a car bomb that plaintiff's half-brother intended for their father could not recover from the third-party defendants he sued unless his half-brother's crime was foreseeable.
As the court wrote: "Solon, the ancient Athenian lawgiver, made no law against patricide because he thought it impossible that anyone could commit so unnatural a crime. Two and a half millennia later, Freud famously claimed the opposite -- that every son harbors murderous impulses toward his father. In this case, we side with the lawyer not the psychoanalyst. Donald Sigmund, the accidental victim of a car bomb that his half-brother intended for their father, cannot recover from the third-party defendants he has sued unless his half-brother's crime was foreseeable. We conclude that neither that crime nor any similar one was foreseeable, and thus affirm the district court's grant of summary judgment in favor of the defendants."
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