A Florida appellate court has officially cleared Publix Super Markets of liability in a tragic 2021 shooting that left two people dead inside a Royal Palm Beach location. On Wednesday, the Fourth District Court of Appeal affirmed a lower court’s decision, ruling that the grocery giant could not have predicted or prevented the “brutal act of random violence.”
The lawsuit stemmed from a June 10, 2021, incident at the Publix at the Crossroads, where a gunman opened fire, killing a grandmother and her grandson. The estates of the victims, S.V. and Litha G. Varone, sued the Florida-based chain, arguing that the company failed in its duty to protect customers from foreseeable criminal acts.
However, the three-judge panel agreed with a Palm Beach County circuit judge’s earlier summary judgment. The court found that because there had been no similar violent crimes at that specific store in the years leading up to the attack, Publix had no legal “duty” to anticipate it.
“The landowner is not bound to anticipate criminal activities of third persons where, as here, the wrongdoers were complete strangers to the landowner and to the victims, and where the incident occurred precipitously,” the court stated, citing long-standing Florida legal precedent.
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Attorneys for the families tried to argue that the shooting was foreseeable due to a “national increase in active shooting events” and the fact that Publix already mandates annual active shooter training for its employees. They pointed to data showing over 400 gun incidents in grocery stores nationwide between 2020 and 2022.
The court remained unmoved by the statistics. The judges ruled that general national trends or internal company training do not create a specific legal duty for an individual storefront. They noted that reported incidents at the Crossroads Publix since 2016 were “minimal” and did not involve physical violence against people.
In a concurring opinion, Judge Jonathan D. Levine warned of the “unintended consequences” if the court had ruled otherwise. He suggested that holding stores liable for random acts of violence based on national trends would force every business—from corporate giants to “Mom and Pop” shops—to hire armed guards and install constant surveillance.
“The public really pays the damages,” Levine wrote, quoting Oliver Wendell Holmes, noting that such massive shifts in public policy and safety requirements should be handled by the legislature, not the courts.
The ruling effectively ends the estates’ attempt to hold the retailer financially responsible for the tragedy. The gunman in the 2021 attack committed suicide at the scene shortly after the murders.
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