Allen Premium Outlets Mass Shooting Lawsuit Reaches Texas Supreme Court

Simon Property Group, the largest mall owner in the U.S., asks the Texas Supreme Court to dismiss a negligence lawsuit filed by victims of the 2023 Allen mall shooting that killed eight.

Mall Giant Fights Negligence Claims Over 2023 Allen Mass Shooting

According to Courthouse News Service, the largest mall owner in the United States urged the Texas Supreme Court on Wednesday to dismiss a negligence lawsuit brought by victims of a 2023 mass shooting at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas — but at least one justice pushed back.

The shooting at Allen Premium Outlets, an open-air shopping center, left eight people dead and seven others injured. Authorities identified the gunman as 33-year-old Mauricio Martinez Garcia, who was wearing a tactical vest bearing a "RWDS" ("Right Wing Death Squad") patch at the time of the attack. Officials say he had expressed white supremacist and neo-Nazi views, though a confirmed motive has never been established.

Victims and their families filed a lawsuit in August 2024 against real estate giant Simon Property Group and two corporate affiliates, alleging the mall's owners were negligent. The plaintiffs argue the company stationed a single unarmed security guard to cover the entire 611,000-square-foot property.

Simon Property Group operates more than 200 malls and outlet centers across the country. Byron Henry, an attorney for the plaintiffs, told the court that the owners of Allen Premium Outlets had prior notice of the risk of multi-victim shootings, pointing to similar incidents at other properties in Simon's portfolio.

The owners' attorney, Monica Latin, urged the justices to rule that property owners bear no legal duty to guard against mass shootings. She cited more than three decades of Texas Supreme Court precedent establishing that "property owners have no general duty under Texas law to protect against third-party acts on their premises, especially criminal acts," and that exceptions to that rule "are and should be limited."

Justice Debra Lehrmann questioned whether mass shootings should be treated the same as ordinary criminal acts.

"This is a completely unique, different thing that our country, unlike most countries, has to deal with, it seems," she said.

Latin argued that imposing such a duty would carry significant societal costs, including potentially requiring "conspicuous security at every point of potential contact."

Lehrmann pushed back directly. "But you have to balance that against what the other reality is," she said. "What would that look like? That you have to go through metal detectors, do the things like we do at airports, etc., compared to telling your children goodbye this morning for school, and I hope to see you when you get back home. And that is a reality of what's out there. So maybe some of those things are not as unreasonable as you're saying, in light of what's on the other side of that scale."

Both a trial court and a state appeals court had previously denied Simon Property Group's attempts to escape the negligence claims, though neither court offered detailed legal reasoning for those decisions. The Texas Supreme Court's ruling, which has yet to be issued, could set a significant precedent for the liability of property owners in mass shooting cases across the state.

Source: Courthouse News Service