Holmes v. Reid

80 Va. Cir. 514, 2010 Va. Cir. LEXIS 155
CourtNorfolk County Circuit Court
DecidedJuly 9, 2010
DocketCase No. (Civil) CL07-4523
StatusPublished
Cited by1 cases

This text of 80 Va. Cir. 514 (Holmes v. Reid) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Norfolk County Circuit Court primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
Holmes v. Reid, 80 Va. Cir. 514, 2010 Va. Cir. LEXIS 155 (Va. Super. Ct. 2010).

Opinion

By Judge Norman A. Thomas

[515]*515In this case, Ms. Patricia Holmes (“Plaintiff’), the Administrator of the Estate of Thomas Holmes (“Holmes” or “the decedent”), sues numerous defendants for the alleged wrongful death of her decedent and son, Holmes. (4th Am. Compl. 1, ¶¶ 2, 72.) On October 29, 2009, Plaintiff filed her Fourth Amended Complaint, and she supplemented that pleading with a Bill of Particulars, filed on March 5, 2010. Two defendants, 421 Granby, L.L.C. (“Granby”) and 421 Granby Real Estate Services, L.L.C. (“GRES”), filed a Plea in Bar in response to Plaintiffs Fourth Amended Complaint and Bill of Particulars. Defendant Robert Frank Wright, sued individually, joins the Plea in Bar in his “representative” capacity, that is, with respect to his membership and ownership interests in both Granby and GRES. Because Wright’s interests in these entities are subsumed within Granby’s and GRES’s legal positions regarding the Plea in Bar, the Court will not take further note of him in its resolution of it. That Plea in Bar is the subject of this Letter Opinion. Having considered the parties’ oral and written arguments, pleadings, pleading exhibits, and applicable authorities, this Court, for the reasons stated herein, denies the Plea in Bar.

Background

This case has its origins in the alleged killing of Holmes by Joseph Reid, who shot him multiple times on or about March 28, 2007, at the Granby Theater, a Norfolk entertainment venue, during an event entitled the “Soul Provider Birthday Bash.” (4th Am. Compl. ¶¶ 15, 16, 17, 25.) Holmes survived in an unconscious state for several months after the shooting, and ultimately died on August 6, 2009. (Id. at ¶¶ 2, 23, 68, 72.) Plaintiff seeks $50 million in compensatory damages from the defendants (id. at ¶ 15), not all of whom have been served or answered.

Although Plaintiff initially sued as the decedent’s next friend, following Holmes’ death, the case evolved to the current wrongful death action. Plaintiff asserted numerous causes of action in earlier iterations of the present Fourth Amended Complaint; however, previous Court rulings have eliminated all but one, a premises liability claim. This remaining claim seeks damages for the defendants’ alleged collective failure to use ordinary care in their duty to protect the decedent as a business invitee of the Granby Theater on March 28, 2007. (Id. at ¶¶ 15, 67.) Plaintiff alleges that certain of the defendants, through various security personnel as well as Dan Licardo, head of security at the facility, had knowledge of Reid’s spoken threat to kill Holmes, made at the Granby Theater within an hour of the shooting. (Id. at ¶¶ 25, 54-56.) That occurrence, Plaintiff alleges, [516]*516placed Holmes in imminent danger of serious injury or death. (Id. at ¶¶ 54, 67.) See generally Wright v. Webb, 234 Va. 527, 530-33, 362 S.E.2d 919, 920-21 (1987).

The Plea in Bar

The Plea in Bar involves two defendants allegedly linked to the ownership and management of the Granby Theater: Granby, the property owner (Bill of Particulars ¶ 1), and GRES, the property “operator and manager.” (Id. at ¶ 2.) These two limited liability company (“LLC”) defendants, along with Downtown Norfolk Entertainment, Inc. (“DNE”), are alleged to be affiliated with Wright, and, indeed, Wright is alleged to be the “alter ego” of each of them. (Id. at ¶ 4.) As to each of these companies, Plaintiff alleges that, although they constitute LLC or corporate entities (4th Am. Compl. ¶¶ 6, 7, 8), Wright was not only the alter ego of them, but also “the only individual who was authorized by law to own, operate, and manage the property” and who “owned, operated, and managed the property both as the agent, servant, and employee of the owner, and individually as the owner, operator, and manager of the property.” (Bill of Particulars ¶ 4.) Further, Plaintiff alleges that, on March 28, 2007, and “throughout the entire time of the events in this cause of action,” DNE “operated and maintained the premises.” (4th Am. Compl. ¶ 6; see also Bill of Particulars ¶ 3.) In addition, Plaintiff alleges that Wright and DNE employed Licardo as head of security for the Granby Theater and that Licardo “was so employed and acting within the scope of his employment throughout the entire time of the events in this cause of action.” (4th Am. Compl. ¶ 4.)

Thus, although Plaintiff uses somewhat broad terminology and sometimes internally inconsistent or mutually exclusive language throughout the Fourth Amended Complaint and Bill of Particulars to describe these four parties’ interrelationships, as to the relevant night, the Court concludes from its holistic review of those pleadings that she casts Granby as property owner-landlord, GRES as property manager-landlord, DNE and Wright as facility occupants-operators, and Wright as a member, owner, and employee of each of these three business entities, and, via a piercing-the-corporate-veil theory, the alter ego and physical embodiment of each of them.

Notwithstanding her assignment of such roles to these defendants, Plaintiff makes the following catch-all allegation as to Granby: “All acts undertaken and/or negligently performed at the Granby Theater were done [517]*517by individuals who by law were the agents and/or employees of the owner, engaging in the performance of their duties for and on behalf of the owner.” (Bill of Particulars ¶ 1.)

In the Plea in Bar, Granby and GRES seek to establish factually, inter alia, that they constitute duly registered limited liability companies, that they have no employees or agents, that they follow lawful and proper corporate formalities, that Wright does not constitute their alter ego, that they do not constitute Wright’s alter ego, and that Wright was not personally present at the Granby Theater on March 28, 2007. (Plea in Bar ¶ 7; Mem. of Law in Supp. of Plea in Bar 3, 4, 5 [hereinafter “Mem. of Law”].) They seek dismissal of the lawsuit against them on the basis that: (1) they had no employees and “no individuals were in a master-servant/employer-employee relationship” with them (Plea in Bar ¶ 7; see infra pleading analysis); (2) “Vicarious liability may not be imposed on an employer due to the negligent acts of a corporate entity employee under a theory of respondeat superior” (id. at ¶ 8); (3) “Virginia law does not impose tort liability on a principal for the actions of its agents based upon agency by estoppel, apparent agency, or ostensible agency theories” (id. at ¶ 9); and 4.) “As the mere landlord [sic] of the premises, Defendants cannot be held vicariously liable for the acts and/or omissions of its [sic] tenants or its [sic] tenants [sic] agents and employees.” (Id. at ¶ 10.)

Plaintiff objects to the Court’s consideration of the Plea in Bar on various grounds, asserting that it is a “disguised” summary judgment motion, that it is not an appropriate procedure to determine “whether these defendants are the principles [sic] of the remaining defendants and/or the owners of the property subject to a nondelegable [sic] duty of reasonable care,” and that “[a] Plea in Bar is used solely for the purpose of establishing a single issue which, as a matter of law, does not state a cause of action.” (Pl.’s Objs.

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88 Va. Cir. 204 (Norfolk County Circuit Court, 2014)

Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
80 Va. Cir. 514, 2010 Va. Cir. LEXIS 155, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/holmes-v-reid-vaccnorfolk-2010.