The facts of the case indicated that a clerk in a liquor store was abducted by a robber, tied to a tree and beaten. At 3:00 a.m. the following morning, the store’s security service generated a report showing that the store’s night alarm had not been set at midnight as scheduled. The store’s general manager was called and arrived at the store at about 3:30 a.m. to find the money and the clerk missing. The clerk was located alive at 6:00 a.m., but he died of his injuries later that day.
The clerk’s estate brought a wrongful death action against the operator of the store’s security service, alleging that the alarm company breached a duty to notify the store’s manager within 30 minutes of closing if the night alarm had not been set, and that if the alarm company had acted promptly, the clerk would have been found earlier and survived. The case was dismissed, but upon appeal, the judgment was reversed and remanded for trial.