Nathan Deal Judicial Center in Atlanta
ATLANTA - The Georgia Court of Appeals has upheld the dismissal of lawsuits over a 2021 shootout at a fraternity-sponsored street party that left one person dead and seven injured.
Omega Psi Phi Fraternity had no reason to suspect gunfire would erupt at the homecoming party outside its Upsilon Sigma chapter at Fort Valley State University and so there was no question for a jury to decide, the appeals court ruled in an Aug. 24 opinion by Judge Anne Elizabeth Barnes.
Tyler French was killed and Megan Jackson was injured after Upsilon Sigma drew a large crowd to the homecoming block party, which it had sponsored for years outside its house. The party always featured food, music and alcohol, and police had been called out in the past to respond to fights - but never gunfire.
On the night of Oct. 22, 2021, Jackson, a freshman at Valley State, heard about the party on social media and attended with several friends. French, who was not a student, also attended with friends including Quinterious Trammell, who later testified police were present and he saw “some arguments but nothing alarming” before the shooting started.
An argument escalated into a fight but before police officers could get there, shots were fired by multiple shooters. French died and Jackson recovered. They sued Omega and Thunder LLC, the owner of the fraternity house.
A trial court dismissed the case, ruling Georgia law required the landlord to be aware of the risk of gunfire in order to be liable for injuries to party attendees. The plaintiffs appealed but fared no better at the higher court.
The question is whether the landowner had “reason to anticipate a criminal act” and failed to protect visitors against it, the appeals court said. The answer to that question depends on whether there is evidence of “substantially similar prior criminal activity.”
“Even viewing the evidence in the light most favorable to plaintiffs as the nonmoving parties, we conclude that they have failed to point to evidence in the record sufficient to create a jury issue on the question of reasonable foreseeability,” the court said.
While there were fights at previous events, the court said, “there is no evidence that any of the prior fights involved guns or other weapons, led to any injuries or hospitalizations, resulted in any arrests, or caused any harm to innocent bystanders.”
Neither was there evidence the fraternity was in a high-crime area, that partygoers with guns had ever been observed before, or that fraternity members had reason to suspect violent armed visitors would attend.
The Georgia General Assembly tightened the law regarding negligent security in 2025 but that didn’t apply in this case because it involved an incident from 2021, the court said.
