A recent case before the Texas Court of Appeals explored the impact of a company’s change in its asset protection policy, which limited its personnel’s discretion to physically search or restrain suspected shoplifters.
Before this change took effect in 2017, the asset protection policies of Home Depot U.S.A., Inc. allowed its employees and security vendors to handcuff and to search suspects.
Point 2 Point Global Security, Inc. supplied off-duty police officers to Home Depot’s store at Forest Central Drive in Dallas, a location where criminal activity was known to be frequent. Chad Seward, an officer for the Dallas Police Department, worked a second job as a security guard at this store.
In April 2018, Seward received a call from Scott Painter, an asset protection specialist working for Home Depot. Painter told Seward that a man in the store was acting suspiciously. Painter asked Seward to help him issue a criminal-trespass warning, which would allow them to remove the suspect from the premises.
The suspect was taken to the store’s asset protection office. Seward made a call to dispatch. Two officers, Rogelio Santander Jr. and Crystal Almeida, responded to the call and went to the office. The suspect then pulled a firearm from his pocket and shot Santander, who died from his injuries, as well as Almeida and Painter, who both survived.
Santander’s survivors and Almeida filed a lawsuit alleging wrongful death and personal injury against Home Depot, Point 2 Point, and Seward....
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