Study shows jurors believe terrorist attacks foreseeable

Studies on potential jurors have revealed some predisposition to the belief that all terror attacks in certain high-risk venues are predictable, regardless of the preventative measures taken or the lack of specific information available in advance of the attack, reports Risk Management Magazine (RM).
The findings imply that an organization’s and insurer’s liability exposure and defence in a negligence case stemming from a terrorist attack could be complicated.
In a recent study, reports RM, randomly selected participants expressed views that they consider Middle Eastern countries to be “terrorist venues” and, as a result, “jurors would find employers negligent merely for sending employees to these locations.”
RM adds that some participants expressed sentiments such as: “You know they are all terrorists, so why would you put people in there?”; “People infiltrate the business and the next thing you know there is an attack.”; and “Companies know what’s going on yet still send people there.”
Such sentiments, reports RM, “do not bode well for employer-defendants on the issue of foreseeability of terrorist attacks against U.S. interests in the Middle East.”
The statements also show that jurors’ perceptions depend as much on external events as the evidence a particular case, RM added.