For decades the defense in a negligent security case wrote itself. A criminal did this. A criminal’s decision to stab a man on a dance floor is not something my client caused, and it breaks the chain of causation as a matter of law. Judges gave the instruction. Juries found negligence, then found no causation, and the case ended in a defense verdict that looked, from the outside, like the jury had contradicted itself.
On January 28, 2026, the Minnesota Supreme Court held that giving that instruction in that posture is error.
In Glay v. R.C. of St. Cloud, Inc., No. A23-1464 (Minn. Jan. 28, 2026), the court held that “a jury should not be instructed on superseding intervening cause when the conduct that an innkeeper claims is a superseding intervening cause is the same conduct that must be foreseeable to the innkeeper to establish the innkeeper’s negligence.” The logic is simple, and the court had already used it twice, in a landowner case and a hiring case, before it got to bars: if the jury found the attack foreseeable (and it had to, to find negligence at all), then the attack can’t be unforeseeable, and “as a matter of law, foreseeable conduct cannot be a superseding intervening cause.”
That’s a big deal. But it’s the second most important thing to know about these cases. The first is what Minnesota’s premises duty actually is, because it isn’t what most people think.
It is a duty to deter, not a duty to prevent.
Does a business have to protect me from being attacked by someone else?
Usually not. Minnesota starts from a firm no-duty rule, and the exceptions are narrow and listed out.
Harper v. Herman, 499 N.W.2d 472 (Minn. 1993), states the rule, quoting Delgado v. Lohmar, 289 N.W.2d 479, 483 (Minn. 1979):
The fact that an actor realizes or should realize that action on his part is necessary for another’s aid or protection does not of itself impose upon him a duty to take such action … unless a special relationship exists … between the actor and the other which gives the other the right to protection.
Harper, 499 N.W.2d at 474. Then comes the list:
Generally, a special relationship giving rise to a duty to warn is only found on the part of common carriers, innkeepers, possessors of land who hold it open to the public, and persons who have custody of another person under circumstances in which that other person is deprived of normal opportunities of self-protection.
Id. (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 314A (1965)). Harper also knocks out, in one sentence, the argument plaintiffs most want to make (they knew it was dangerous): “superior knowledge of a dangerous condition by itself, in the absence of a duty to provide protection, is insufficient to establish liability in negligence.” Id. at 475.
The supreme court has treated that list as a fence, not a starting point. In H.B. ex rel. Clark v. Whittemore, 552 N.W.2d 705 (Minn. 1996), children in a mobile home park told the resident manager that another tenant was sexually abusing them. The manager told them to tell their parents and did nothing else. The court of appeals found a special relationship. The supreme court reversed, holding that none of the asserted grounds “even remotely falls within the parameters this court has carefully carved out as the outer boundaries for this exception to the common law rule.” Id. at 709 (quoting Harper, emphasis added).
Two things from Whittemore belong in any intake conversation:
- Entrustment has to be accepted. “Unlike Erickson, here there was no acceptance by Arndt of the children’s entrustment; indeed it was specifically rejected when Arndt instructed the children to tell their parents about Whittemore’s abuse.” Id. at 708–09.
- Special relationships “typically involve some degree of dependence.” Id. at 708 (citing Restatement (Second) of Torts § 314A cmt. b). Custody, vulnerability, and losing the normal ability to protect yourself are the facts that keep showing up.
So how did the parking ramp case get around that?
It didn’t. It added a category, and it defined the duty in a way that’s a lot friendlier to businesses than the phrase “negligent security” suggests.
Erickson v. Curtis Investment Co., 447 N.W.2d 165 (Minn. 1989), came out of a rape in a downtown Minneapolis parking ramp at 5 p.m. on a December afternoon. Justice Simonett set it up this way, at 168:
If the law is to impose a duty on A to protect B from C’s criminal acts, the law usually looks for a special relationship between A and B, a situation where B has in some way entrusted his or her safety to A and A has accepted that entrustment. This special relationship also assumes that the harm represented by C is something that A is in a position to protect against and should be expected to protect against.
And then the sentence defense lawyers should know by heart:
As to business enterprises generally, the law has been cautious and reluctant to impose a duty to protect. A mere merchant-customer relationship is not enough to impose a duty on the merchant to protect his customers.
Id. The court walked through the policy objections and took them seriously. Crime prevention is a government function. A duty to guard against “the devious, sociopathic, and unpredictable conduct of criminals does not lend itself easily to an ascertainable standard of care uncorrupted by hindsight.” Id. And then there’s cost: “To post security guards at each parking ramp level 24 hours a day might be the most effective crime deterrent, but the cost may be prohibitive for both the property owner and the customer. A parking ramp cannot be a fortress.” Id. at 169.
What tipped it was the building itself: “its many levels, its supporting pillars, its stairwells, its relatively low ceilings, and its rows of unoccupied parked cars,” anyone able to walk in from the street unseen, the place “relatively deserted,” the empty cars drawing thieves. Those features “present a particular focus or unique opportunity for criminals and their criminal activities, an opportunity which to some degree is different from that presented out on the street and in the neighborhood generally.” Id.
Then the holding, written as a jury instruction, and every word of it carries weight:
The operator or owner of a parking ramp facility has a duty to use reasonable care to deter criminal activity on its premises which may cause personal harm to customers. The care to be provided is that care which a reasonably prudent operator or owner would provide under like circumstances. Among the circumstances to be considered are the location and construction of the ramp, the practical feasibility and cost of various security measures, and the risk of personal harm to customers which the owner or operator knows, or in the exercise of due care should know, presents a reasonable likelihood of happening. In this connection, the owner or operator is not an insurer or guarantor of the safety of its premises and cannot be expected to prevent all criminal activity. The fact that a criminal assault occurs on the premises, standing alone, is not evidence that the duty to deter criminal acts has been breached.
Id. at 169–70.
Look at what that asks a jury to do. Not could this crime have been stopped. Instead: given this location, this construction, the cost and feasibility of the measures available, and the known likelihood of harm, did this owner do what a reasonably prudent owner would have done to deter? The court acknowledged that the jury in a case like this “may be deciding not so much a conflict in the facts as making an evaluative policy judgment.” Id. at 170.
Cost is part of the standard of care, not a defense to it. That’s unusual, and it’s the single biggest thing a plaintiff’s expert has to deal with. An opinion that says “cameras would have helped” without dealing with price, feasibility, and the risk the owner actually knew about isn’t answering the instruction the jury will get.
Bars and hotels are governed by an older, different test
If the property belongs to an innkeeper (and in Minnesota that includes bars), Erickson isn’t the test. It’s a four-element test that came before it.
Boone v. Martinez, 567 N.W.2d 508 (Minn. 1997), states it:
In order to establish an innkeeper’s liability, a plaintiff must prove four elements: (1) the proprietor must be put on notice of the offending party’s vicious or dangerous propensities by some act or threat, (2) the proprietor must have an adequate opportunity to protect the injured patron, (3) the proprietor must fail to take reasonable steps to protect the injured patron, and (4) the injury must be foreseeable.
Id. at 510. Boone itself was a defense win, and it shows how hard element one is. It was a stabbing in an Albert Lea bar. The plaintiff’s notice evidence was a pool-cue fight outside the bar a year earlier that no employee was shown to know about, plus testimony that the assailant looked drunk and angry and “half-slam[med]” his beer. Neither was enough to get vicious propensities to a jury. Id. at 510–11.
Henson v. Uptown Drink, LLC, 922 N.W.2d 185 (Minn. 2019), restated those elements, id. at 190, and then wouldn’t let bars slip out of them through a side door. The bar argued implied primary assumption of risk. The court wouldn’t extend the doctrine:
Although the service and consumption of alcohol can most certainly lead to incidents such as the one here, we have never considered operating and patronizing bars to be inherently dangerous activities. The operation and patronage of bars is not — and should not be — a contact sport. To the contrary, our precedent is clear that bar owners, as do all innkeepers, have a duty of care. As we have said, “Tavern owners in Minnesota have the duty to exercise reasonable care under the circumstances to protect their patrons from injury.”
Id. at 191 (quoting Alholm v. Wilt, 394 N.W.2d 488, 490 (Minn. 1986)). In the same breath the court drew the line: “That is not to say that a bar owner’s liability is unlimited; the four well-established elements of innkeeper negligence — especially foreseeability — sufficiently mark the duty of innkeepers to prevent injuries.” Id.
And Henson shows what enough notice looks like. The evidence was a timeline: 9:24 p.m., a server watches one patron and alerts a coworker; 9:34, the other patron is in an altercation and the bartender takes his drink and tells him to leave; 9:36, the general manager steps in. On that record, “[e]ven before Sunby threw a punch and Anderson grabbed the manager, there was evidence of both obvious intoxication and problematic interactions with bar employees and other patrons,” and foreseeability had to go to the fact-finder. Id. at 192–93.
When alcohol caused the intoxication that caused the harm, a dram shop claim under Minn. Stat. § 340A.801 usually rides along with the innkeeper claim, and it has its own, much shorter notice deadline. See Minnesota’s dram shop notice deadline.
What changed in January 2026?
Glay v. R.C. of St. Cloud, Inc., No. A23-1464 (Minn. Jan. 28, 2026), is a wrongful death case out of the Red Carpet Nightclub in St. Cloud. Three men assaulted a patron on the dance floor. Staff threw the three out. Then, against the club’s own policy, they didn’t text the other staff or the door, didn’t tell the front door about the removal, and didn’t wand the three men when all of them were back inside twenty minutes later. The three found Unity McGill on the dance floor and stabbed him to death.
The jury found the club negligent, and then found the negligence wasn’t a direct cause. It never answered the superseding-cause question on the special verdict form.
The supreme court affirmed the court of appeals and ordered a new trial. Instructing on both innkeeper negligence and superseding intervening cause, it held, was “apt to confuse or mislead the jury by instructing it to make the very same determination twice.”
Here’s the heart of it:
On the one hand, if a jury determines that the evidence fails to establish any one of the elements of innkeeper negligence — including foreseeability — then the jury must find the innkeeper was not negligent. In that situation, an instruction on superseding intervening cause is unnecessary because the jury will never reach the question of causation. On the other hand, in cases where the jury finds a defendant innkeeper negligent, it necessarily means the jury concluded that the patron’s injurious conduct [was] foreseeable. In that situation, the innkeeper cannot establish that the patron’s conduct giving rise to the innkeeper’s negligence was also a superseding intervening cause because, as a matter of law, foreseeable conduct cannot be a superseding intervening cause.
The four-element superseding cause test is where the defense argument dies. Glay quotes it from Wartnick v. Moss & Barnett, 490 N.W.2d 108, 113 (Minn. 1992), which quoted Rieger v. Zackoski, 321 N.W.2d 16, 21 (Minn. 1982): the intervening cause’s harmful effects must have occurred after the original negligence; it must not have been brought about by the original negligence; it must actively work to bring about a result that would not otherwise have followed; and it must not have been reasonably foreseeable by the original wrongdoer. A finding of innkeeper negligence necessarily negates the fourth element.
The court also flatly rejected the argument that a murder can never be foreseeable. The club leaned on Anderson v. Theisen, 43 N.W.2d 272 (Minn. 1950), for the idea that an intentional criminal act by a third person always breaks the chain. Glay answered with Wallinga v. Johnson, 131 N.W.2d 216 (Minn. 1964), a case about rings stolen from a hotel safe:
As a general rule, a criminal act breaks the chain of causation and insulates the primary actor from liability. A criminal intervening force, however, cannot be a legally effective superseding cause unless it possesses the attribute of unforeseeability. The original actor cannot claim immunity from liability for loss when the possibility that third persons will act in a certain manner is one of the hazards he should guard against.
Wallinga, 131 N.W.2d at 219–20, quoted in Glay.
And Glay is the third case in a line, which is why I read it as settled, not new. The court traced the same logic through Crohn v. Dupre, 190 N.W.2d 678 (Minn. 1971), a landowner case where a jury found negligence and then found no direct cause, and the supreme court held the two answers “clearly inconsistent”. It traced it through Ponticas v. K.M.S. Investments, 331 N.W.2d 907 (Minn. 1983), the negligent hiring case, which had already held that “[t]he inherent nature of a negligent hiring cause of action precludes the application of superseding intervening cause,” id. at 915–16.
Glay made it general: “Like the defendants in Crohn and Ponticas, R.C. owed a duty to protect a certain class of persons — its patrons — from foreseeable harm caused by a third party.” When the duty is defined by whether third-party harm was foreseeable, that same third-party harm can’t supersede.
One caution, in the court’s own words. The holding turns on the conduct being the same: “What is important is that, in this case, the harmful event or conduct which must have been foreseeable to establish innkeeper negligence and the conduct that R.C. claims is a superseding intervening cause are the same: the three assailants’ attack on another patron. This may not always be the case.” If a defendant points to a genuinely different intervening act, the instruction may still be available.
Does the judge decide foreseeability, or the jury?
Both, depending on the record, and you want to know which one you’re arguing to.
Boone states the default: “Foreseeability is a threshold issue and is more properly decided by the court prior to submitting the case to the jury.” 567 N.W.2d at 510 (citing Alholm, 394 N.W.2d at 491 n.5). The standard jury instruction for innkeeper negligence, CIVJIG 85.70, follows that. It lists three elements and doesn’t ask the jury about foreseeability at all.
The Glay district court added a fourth, foreseeability element to the instruction. The supreme court noted in a footnote that while foreseeability is often decided by the court as a matter of law, “[u]nder certain circumstances … the question of foreseeability may be submitted to the jury,” citing Montemayor v. Sebright Products, Inc., 898 N.W.2d 623, 629 (Minn. 2017), and Domagala v. Rolland, 805 N.W.2d 14, 27 (Minn. 2011). Glay didn’t touch that practice. What it ruled out was pairing that instruction with a superseding-cause instruction on the same facts.
In practice: on a close record, foreseeability goes to the jury, and once it does, the defendant has lost the superseding-cause route to beating causation.
Can I sue the security company?
Yes, and on a theory that doesn’t depend on who hired it.
Erickson had a second holding on exactly this. The security firm argued that it had contracted only with the hotel, not with the parking operator, so it owed nothing to the operator’s customer. The court rejected that on two separate grounds. The first was factual: “Leadens undertook to patrol the entire ramp without distinguishing between Curtis’ patrons and Allright’s customers. … In short, Leadens owed a duty of care to Ms. Erickson because it undertook that duty.” 447 N.W.2d at 170.
The second, and the more useful one, was Restatement (Second) of Torts § 324A: liability attaches to one who “undertakes for another (whether gratuitously or for a consideration) to perform a duty owed by the other to a third person.” Id. The court held the security firm’s “duty to use that degree of care which a reasonably prudent professional security firm would use was owed also to plaintiff,” and that breach and causation were fact questions where the guard had walked past the car during a twenty-five minute assault. Id. at 170–71.
That last fact is the real lesson. The theory against a security vendor usually isn’t that it should have had more guards. It’s that the guard it did have walked the round badly.
The assailant is judgment-proof. Who pays?
This is where the money question lives, and Minnesota’s apportionment statute produces a result that surprises clients.
Start with how the statute defines “fault”. Minn. Stat. § 604.01, subd. 1a: “‘Fault’ includes acts or omissions that are in any measure negligent or reckless toward the person or property of the actor or others, or that subject a person to strict tort liability.” Breach of warranty, unreasonable assumption of risk, misuse of a product, failure to mitigate, and the § 340A.801 complicity defense are added by name. Intentional torts aren’t on the list.
Then the apportionment statute. Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subd. 1: “When two or more persons are severally liable, contributions to awards shall be in proportion to the percentage of fault attributable to each, except that the following persons are jointly and severally liable for the whole award: (1) a person whose fault is greater than 50 percent; (2) two or more persons who act in a common scheme or plan that results in injury; (3) a person who commits an intentional tort; or (4) [environmental and public health liabilities].”
So the assailant, the one person with no money, is jointly and severally liable for the whole award. The business, if the jury puts it at 30 percent at fault, is severally liable for 30 percent.
And Staab shuts the workaround. In Staab v. Diocese of St. Cloud, 813 N.W.2d 68 (Minn. 2012), a jury split fault 50/50 between the only defendant and a nonparty. The plaintiff argued the statute couldn’t apply because a nonparty isn’t “liable.” The supreme court disagreed, holding that liability arises “at the instant the tort is committed,” not at judgment, and “that section 604.02 applies whenever multiple tortfeasors act to cause an indivisible harm to a victim, regardless of how many of those tortfeasors are named as parties in a lawsuit arising from that tort.” Id. at 77. A severally liable defendant “is responsible for only his or her equitable share of the award.” Id. at 74.
The one lever left is reallocation. Minn. Stat. § 604.02, subd. 2: “Upon motion made not later than one year after judgment is entered, the court shall determine whether all or part of a party’s equitable share of the obligation is uncollectible from that party and shall reallocate any uncollectible amount among the other parties, including a claimant at fault, according to their respective percentages of fault.” By its terms it reallocates among parties. That’s a reason to join the assailant even when he plainly can’t pay, and a reason to calendar the one-year deadline the day judgment enters. For the broader mechanics, see joint and several liability in Minnesota and comparative fault and collateral sources.
One threshold question here is genuinely open. Should a jury compare the fault of a negligent defendant against an intentional tortfeasor at all, given that § 604.01, subd. 1a doesn’t define intentional conduct as “fault”? That question was squarely raised in Glay on cross-petition. The supreme court granted review on it and then didn’t answer it, noting that its remand for a new trial made the question unnecessary and that the court of appeals hadn’t addressed it either. Glay, No. A23-1464, slip op. at 3 n.1. If you’re litigating apportionment in a third-party-crime case, treat the question as unresolved in Minnesota and preserve it.
What the evidence in these cases actually looks like
Two opinions supply the template, and it’s not the one most people expect.
From Erickson, the record about the place: roughly 85 “security incidents” in the ramp over three to four years, though never a crime against a person; hundreds of “security related incidents” in the attached hotel, of debatable relevance; a letter from the hotel manager to the ward’s council member less than two months before the rape, reporting increased crime inside and outside the hotel and concerns about customer safety; a public meeting where similar concerns came up; and expert criticism of the lighting, unmonitored street access, patrol frequency, missing signage, guard training and supervision, and security going down while crime was going up. One expert testified that “there is a potential for crimes of personal violence where property crimes occur.” 447 N.W.2d at 167–68.
That last opinion is the bridge. Property crime is the statistic these places generate. Violent crime is what hurt the plaintiff. Connecting the two is expert work.
From Glay, the record about following the rules: the club had a policy of removing anyone involved in a fight, and a policy that security staff text one another and notify the door about anyone thrown out. No text went out. No evidence the door was told. All three assailants were back inside within twenty minutes. Nobody wanded them.
In a negligent security case, the most damaging evidence is usually the defendant’s own written policy. It shows what the business itself thought was reasonable. It cuts off the feasibility and cost arguments Erickson invites. And the gap between the policy and what happened that night is what a jury remembers.
The flip side for businesses is uncomfortable but real: a written security protocol nobody follows is worse than no protocol. That’s not a reason to write nothing down. It’s a reason to audit.
Where this leaves the case
Minnesota doesn’t make a business the insurer of its property, and Erickson says so right in the instruction. A crime on the premises isn’t, standing alone, evidence of anything.
But the escape hatches have narrowed. Henson wouldn’t hand bars an assumption-of-risk defense. Glay took away the superseding-cause instruction wherever the intervening crime is the same crime the duty was meant to guard against. What’s left is the ordinary work of a negligence case: duty, notice, feasible measures, and what the defendant’s own rules said it would do.
The harder problem isn’t liability. It’s that the person who did the harm is jointly and severally liable for everything and owns nothing, while the business that failed to deter is severally liable for its share. The size of the verdict and the size of the recovery are two different numbers. You need to understand that gap before the case is filed, because it decides whether the case should be filed at all.
For claims against the person who actually committed the assault, including the insurance exclusion that usually makes that defendant uncollectible, see suing someone who hit you. For the ordinary premises claim with no third-party crime in it, see Minnesota premises liability for snow and ice.
Madgett Law, LLC handles Minnesota negligent security and innkeeper negligence claims — bars, hotels, apartment complexes, parking facilities, and the security contractors that patrol them — including the notice-and-foreseeability record these cases turn on and the apportionment analysis that determines what a verdict is actually worth. Surveillance video and incident logs are usually overwritten in weeks. If you were attacked on someone else’s property, the preservation letter is the first thing that has to go out. Send us a message or call 612-470-6529.
Sources: Minn. Stat. § 604.01 (comparative fault — subd. 1a, the definition of “fault,” which reaches negligent, reckless, and strict-liability conduct and does not enumerate intentional torts); Minn. Stat. § 604.02 (apportionment of damages — subd. 1, several liability as the default and the four exceptions imposing joint and several liability, including subd. 1(3), “a person who commits an intentional tort”; subd. 2, reallocation of uncollectible amounts on motion made not later than one year after judgment is entered) (Minnesota Office of the Revisor of Statutes, current statutes). Cases: Glay v. R.C. of St. Cloud, Inc., No. A23-1464 (Minn. Jan. 28, 2026) (syllabus point 2 and holding that a jury should not be instructed on superseding intervening cause where the conduct claimed to be superseding is the same conduct that must be foreseeable to establish innkeeper negligence; “as a matter of law, foreseeable conduct cannot be a superseding intervening cause”; the four-element superseding cause test quoted from Wartnick v. Moss & Barnett, 490 N.W.2d 108, 113 (Minn. 1992), quoting Rieger v. Zackoski, 321 N.W.2d 16, 21 (Minn. 1982); the rejection of Anderson v. Theisen, 43 N.W.2d 272 (Minn. 1950), as establishing a per se rule, and the passage quoted from Wallinga v. Johnson, 131 N.W.2d 216, 219–20 (Minn. 1964); the parallel to Crohn v. Dupre, 190 N.W.2d 678 (Minn. 1971), and Ponticas v. K.M.S. Investments, 331 N.W.2d 907, 915–16 (Minn. 1983); the “this may not always be the case” limitation; slip op. at 3 n.1, declining to reach whether fault may be compared between a negligent tortfeasor and intentional tortfeasors; slip op. at 7 n.6, on when foreseeability may be submitted to the jury, citing Montemayor v. Sebright Products, Inc., 898 N.W.2d 623, 629 (Minn. 2017), and Domagala v. Rolland, 805 N.W.2d 14, 27 (Minn. 2011); the CIVJIG 85.70 three-element standard instruction; and the trial record concerning R.C.’s removal, notification, and wanding policies) (Minnesota Judicial Branch slip opinion, mn.gov/law-library-stat/archive/supct/2026/); Erickson v. Curtis Investment Co., 447 N.W.2d 165, 167–71 (Minn. 1989) (the special-relationship framing at 168; “a mere merchant-customer relationship is not enough” at 168; the policy discussion and “a parking ramp cannot be a fortress” at 169; the duty-to-deter holding and its enumerated circumstances, the “not an insurer or guarantor” language, and the “standing alone, is not evidence” language at 169–70; the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 324A undertaking analysis as to the security firm at 170–71; the security-incident, correspondence, and expert record at 167–68); Harper v. Herman, 499 N.W.2d 472, 474 (Minn. 1993) (the affirmative-duty rule quoted from Delgado v. Lohmar, 289 N.W.2d 479, 483 (Minn. 1979); the Restatement (Second) of Torts § 314A list of special relationships; superior knowledge alone insufficient); H.B. ex rel. Clark v. Whittemore, 552 N.W.2d 705, 707–09 (Minn. 1996) (general no-duty rule at 707; special relationships “typically involve some degree of dependence” at 708; entrustment must be accepted, at 708–09; the “outer boundaries” characterization of the Harper list at 709); Boone v. Martinez, 567 N.W.2d 508, 510–11 (Minn. 1997) (the four elements of innkeeper liability; foreseeability as a threshold issue citing Alholm v. Wilt, 394 N.W.2d 488, 491 n.5 (Minn. 1986); insufficiency of the notice evidence); Henson v. Uptown Drink, LLC, 922 N.W.2d 185, 190–93 (Minn. 2019) (restating the Boone elements; declining to extend implied primary assumption of risk to the operation and patronage of bars; “not — and should not be — a contact sport”; the tavern-owner duty quoted from Alholm, 394 N.W.2d at 490; the timeline evidence sufficient to send foreseeability to the fact-finder); Ponticas v. K.M.S. Investments, 331 N.W.2d 907, 915–16 (Minn. 1983) (superseding intervening cause unavailable in a negligent hiring case); Staab v. Diocese of St. Cloud, 813 N.W.2d 68, 74, 77 (Minn. 2012) (a severally liable defendant is responsible only for its equitable share; § 604.02 applies whenever multiple tortfeasors cause an indivisible harm regardless of how many are named as parties) (Caselaw Access Project, static.case.law). This article is general legal information about Minnesota law, not legal advice, and reading it does not create an attorney–client relationship. Every case depends on its own facts. No outcome is promised or implied.