Note: This order was filed under Illinois Supreme Court Rule 23 and is not precedent except in the limited circumstances allowed under Rule 23(e)(1).
Background
On January 4, 2019, Carl McLaurin, an armed security guard employed by AGB Investigative Services under contract with the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), was conducting a roving vehicle patrol of CHA properties. While en route, McLaurin and his partner observed a shooting from a Kia automobile at an intersection that had no connection to any CHA property. Rather than reporting the incident and continuing to his assigned destination, McLaurin pursued the Kia onto the Dan Ryan Expressway and for a considerable distance until it crashed near Garfield Boulevard and Wells Street — again, far from any CHA property. When an occupant of the Kia pointed a handgun at a nearby motorist, McLaurin exited his vehicle and discharged his semiautomatic pistol. One of his bullets struck Joseph Taylor, a bystander sitting in his car at a nearby Wendy’s restaurant. The bullet fragment lodged near a nerve in Taylor’s skull and could not be safely removed, leaving him in chronic pain.
Taylor sued CHA, AGB, and McLaurin for negligence. He settled with AGB and McLaurin and proceeded to trial against CHA alone. At trial, Taylor argued that CHA was negligent in failing to enforce a provision of its contract with AGB requiring security guards to have at least three years of prior security experience — a requirement McLaurin did not satisfy, having previously worked only in retail and facility maintenance. The jury returned a verdict in Taylor’s favor and awarded $7 million in damages. CHA moved for judgment notwithstanding the verdict (judgment n.o.v.), arguing it owed Taylor no duty of care as a matter of law. The trial court denied the motion, and CHA appealed.
The appellate court reviewed the denial of judgment n.o.v. de novo and reversed, vacating the $7 million judgment in its entirety.
The Court’s Holding
The court held that CHA was entitled to judgment n.o.v. because, as a matter of law, it owed Taylor no duty of care. The court identified two independent grounds for this conclusion. First, the court found that Taylor’s injury was not a reasonably foreseeable or likely consequence of CHA’s alleged failure to enforce the three-year experience requirement. McLaurin’s decision to pursue fleeing suspects across multiple miles of city streets and expressway — entirely unconnected to any CHA property, resident, or assigned duty — was the product of his own choices, not any deficiency traceable to years of security experience. No evidence showed that a guard with three years of experience would have acted differently, or that the lack of such experience was causally linked to the shooting. The connection between the contractual qualification requirement and Taylor’s injury, the court concluded, was “purely conjectural.”
Second, the court held that even if some foreseeability could be established, CHA’s liability for the acts of its independent contractor AGB was limited under longstanding Illinois Supreme Court precedent. Under Pippin v. Chicago Housing Authority, 78 Ill. 2d 204 (1979), and Restatement (Second) of Torts § 411, CHA’s duty as employer of an independent security contractor extended only to the exercise of reasonable care in hiring AGB — not to supervising the day-to-day conduct of its guards. Taylor neither alleged nor proved CHA was negligent in selecting AGB as its contractor. The court further rejected Taylor’s argument that CHA had “retained control” over AGB’s work sufficient to invoke the exception under Restatement § 414. The evidence showed that AGB exclusively handled hiring, training, licensing verification, supervision, discipline, and operational procedures for its guards. CHA’s general right to audit compliance with contract terms did not rise to the level of retained control over the methods or details of the work.
The court also rejected CHA’s procedural arguments that it had waived or forfeited its duty arguments by agreeing to a general duty instruction (IPI Civil No. 10.04) at trial, finding that such a general instruction does not preclude a defendant from later challenging whether the specific theory of negligence submitted to the jury was legally cognizable.
Key Takeaways
- Internal policies and contract requirements do not themselves create a duty of care owed to injured third parties; a plaintiff must independently establish that the law imposed the duty at issue.
- Under Pippin, a public housing authority’s liability for the acts of a contracted security firm is confined to negligence in the hiring of the contractor itself — not in the contractor’s day-to-day supervision of its employees.
- The “retained control” exception to independent-contractor immunity (Restatement § 414) requires more than a general right to audit contract compliance or receive reports; the hiring entity must exercise meaningful control over the methods and operative details of the work.
- Foreseeability of injury requires a genuine nexus between the defendant’s specific alleged omission and the harm that occurred; where a guard’s unauthorized, off-mission pursuit leads to injury entirely disconnected from the contractor’s assigned duties, the injury is not foreseeable as a matter of law.
- A defendant’s agreement to the general duty instruction (IPI Civil No. 10.04) at trial does not waive arguments that a particular theory of negligence lacks a legally cognizable duty.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the limits of premises-owner and government-entity liability when private security contractors act outside the scope of their assigned duties. For public entities like housing authorities that contract for security services, the ruling makes clear that liability does not follow from every bad act of a contractor’s employee — especially when that employee abandons his assigned post to pursue an independent course of action with no connection to the protected property or its residents. Plaintiff’s counsel should carefully assess whether any independent basis for duty exists before relying solely on a contractor’s violation of its own qualification standards.
The decision also provides a useful reminder for defense practitioners that the independent-contractor immunity doctrine retains real force in Illinois, and that the retained-control exception demands concrete evidence of supervisory involvement in operational details — not merely the existence of a contract with performance benchmarks. Because this is a Rule 23 unpublished order, it carries no precedential value in Illinois courts except in narrow circumstances, but it offers a detailed factual template for analogous negligent-hiring and negligent-supervision disputes.