HOUSTON – A jury awarded a former Galleria employee $3.63 million on Nov. 8 in a case against a security company and the largest shopping mall in Texas. The woman was 19 in August 2003 when she was abducted from the Galleria parking garage and raped. David Matthews and Jason Webster, the victim’s attorneys, argued that HG
Shopping Center, LP., and its security company IPC International Corp., were negligent in failing to warn her of three previous assaults on women in the 3 1/2 months prior to her kidnap and rape.

Defense attorneys brought crime expert Dr. Merlyn Moore, who argued that the previous Galleria assaults were statistically insignificant and failed to indicate a pattern of crime that made the victim’s assault foreseeable.

Dr. Moore also argued that informing the Galleria's 350 retail outlets of the previous assaults would have caused mass hysteria. Matthews countered with a document showing the Galleria issued a security alert to 350 retailers in response to the theft of a bank bag in the weeks preceding the sexual assault, and therefore had the ability to warn retailers of previous assaults and should have.

Matthews also argued previous attacks established a pattern of crime that should have prompted mall security to add more cameras and personnel, and to establish a system to monitor roving security
positions in the garages. Two of the previous assault victims testified, as did the rape victim, that their screams went unanswered by mall security.

Defense lawyers for IPC International Corp., one of the largest security companies in the U.S. with more than 6,500 employees, were unable to prove the mall had the "100 percent coverage" that security director Floyd Sharp said he called for after the second reported assault. The Galleria's parent company, the Simon Property Group, owns more than 200 retail centers across the U.S..