The Eastland Court of Appeals has affirmed a trial court order granting summary judgment to Wal-Mart and Greyhound in a case in which a Wal-Mart customer was murdered by a mentally ill Greyhound passenger who had gotten off a Midland-bound bus in Eastland.
Bulah Marie Garrett, Individually and as Representative of the Estate of Lyndell Ray Garrett, Deceased; Lisa Garrett; and Shelly Garrett v. Wal-Mart Stores Texas, LLC d/b/a Wal-Mart Supercenter #561 and Greyhound Lines, Inc. (No. 11-24-00058-CV; March 26, 2026) arose from the 2019 murder of a Wal-Mart customer in Eastland by a mentally ill offender. The offender got on a Greyhound bus in Dallas, bound for Midland. During the trip, he began talking to himself and making loud noises, followed by kicking seats and windows. Eventually, the bus driver stopped at a convenience store in Eastland and let him off the bus. The driver did not notify Greyhound or local law enforcement that the offender posted a threat of violence. The offender went to the local Wal-Mart store, where he received a money transfer. Among other things, he bought a pocketknife. Shortly thereafter, he returned to the store, where a patron reported his erratic behavior to store employees. Shortly thereafter, he attacked a customer and killed him with the knife. Plaintiffs filed suit against Wal-Mart and Greyhound, alleging negligence and gross negligence. Defendants filed motions for summary judgment. The trial court granted them. Plaintiffs appealed.
In an opinion by Chief Justice Bailey, the court of appeals affirmed. With respect to Greyhound, Plaintiffs argued that it owed a duty of care to the deceased based on its responsibilities as a common carrier and that in undertaking to remove the offender from the bus, it assumed a duty to the deceased to protect him from the offender’s actions. Though ordinarily no duty exists to control the conduct of third persons, Plaintiffs argued that Greyhound had such a duty because its “special relationship” with the offender. Such relationships include the duty of parents to control their children, master-servant relations, possessors of land and licensees, and those who “take charge of a third person.” Plaintiffs contend that Greyhound established a special relationship by letting him off the bus before the scheduled stop, but the court found no “affirmative and negligent act of control over [the offender] that could create a duty on the party of Greyhound to prevent [him] from causing an unreasonable risk of harm to members of the general public.” Plaintiffs attempted to frame their theory in terms of the alleged duties of common carriers toward the general public to protect the general public from the conduct of a passenger, but the court didn’t go for that, either. They may owe such a duty to their passengers, but not the public at large.
Plaintiffs further contended that the driver should have notified the company and local law enforcement as Greyhound’s internal corporate policies require under some circumstances. But, observing that the Texas Supreme Court has declined to create a standard of care or duty based on internal policies, the court “reject[ed] any argument that, by creating internal policies regarding the reporting and documentation of incidents on its buses, Greyhound somehow took on a duty to protect the general public from the criminal conduct of its former passenger,” much less that “a common carrier owes a general duty to the protect members of the public from the conduct of its passengers, or former passengers.” The court also kicked out Plaintiffs’ claim that Greyhound was negligent by letting the offender off the bus because they failed to timely plead it. Even if it had concluded that Greyhound owed a duty, the court concluded, Plaintiffs could not establish that the act of letting a passenger off the bus several hours before the incident in question was a “substantial factor in bringing about the incident.”
The court rejected Plaintiffs’ claims against Wal-Mart as well. Plaintiffs first argued that Wal-Mart engaged in negligent activity by selling the offender beer and a pocketknife. But a “landowner can be held liable for negligent activities only if its allegedly negligent conduct is contemporaneous with the injury” (citations omitted). Here the sales occurred hours before the incident. Additionally, Plaintiffs’ claims based on Wal-Mart’s liability for “supplying chattel to others” were not cognizable in Texas law. Although “Texas courts have recognized a cause of action for negligent entrustment of motor vehicles, and even firearms in situations where the owner of the chattel allows it to be used by others,” SCOTX has explicitly “stated that no cause of action for negligent entrustment is available against a seller of chattel, even when the chattel is a firearm” (citations omitted). That goes for pocketknives as well. As to selling beer to the offender, any claim has to brought under the Alcoholic Beverage Code, and Plaintiffs didn’t assert any violations thereof.
Plaintiffs asserted premises liability, but in general no duty exists to protect one person from the criminal acts of a third person beyond “a duty to use ordinary care to protect invitees from criminal acts of third parties if [they] know[] or [have] reason to know of an unreasonable and foreseeable risk of harm to the invitee” (citations omitted). This rule is case-specific, the court observed, and has generally been limited to situations in which the landowner has “actual and direct knowledge” of immediately preceding conduct that poses a danger to an invitee and “some indication that criminal conduct is ‘imminent’” (citations omitted). Consequently, “[M]ere evidence of erratic, and even agitated, behavior is insufficient to satisfy the requirement for immediately preceding and similar conduct.” Here the court found no evidence that Wal-Mart had any “actual and direct” knowledge that the offender was “overly aggressive, and the court was unwilling to hold a landowner liable for a third-party’s conduct even supposing “that the landowner could have acquired knowledge about conduct of the third-party by conducting a reasonable investigation ….” The appropriate standard, therefore, is “actual awareness that violent conduct is imminent.”
Here another customer reported that the offender was acting erratically and suggested that employees confront him in the parking lot. This may have constituted indirect knowledge, but Wal-Mart was under no duty to investigate further. But even if Wal-Mart had actual and direct knowledge, there was no evidence that the offender’s violent act was imminent. Though he “was glaring at customers and following them around the parking lot,” that didn’t rise to the level of “similar instances of violence” qualifying as “an indication of ‘imminent’ criminal conduct.” “Uneasy” feelings do not “give rise to” landowner liability. Additionally, as was the case with Greyhound, Wal-Mart’s internal policies were beside the point. Similarly, even if the court had gone with Plaintiffs up to this point, the proximate cause hurdle was insurmountable.
The court affirmed the trial court’s summary judgment in favor of Defendants.
