Warren Brookbanks: Corporate cowardice no excuse

BP's security policies may be insufficient to protect customers. Photo / Hawke's Bay Today

Many readers will be astounded to learn that large companies like BP see no need to offer any protection or assistance to customers who are assaulted while on premises operated by the company.

The recently reported incident where a BP customer was assaulted during a robbery by a person purporting to hold a gun is a sad reminder of the breakdown of a sense of communal responsibility that sustained social relationships in former generations.

But can BP - and companies like it- be so confident that its failure to do anything in the circumstances to assist the victim of the robbery is consistent with its obligations under the law?

It may be consistent with its company policy but what of its obligations under the general law?

New Zealand criminal law is clear that where a person, or a company, is in charge of a "dangerous thing" - an expression that would almost certainly include a service station - it has a duty to take "reasonable precautions" and to use reasonable care to avoid any danger to human life that might arise from the operation of that dangerous thing, and its surrounding circumstances.

A person is criminally liable for the consequences of failing without lawful excuse to discharge that duty.

It might be argued that this particular provision in the Crimes Act aims to hold operators accountable where the thing under their control directly endangers life, rather than indirectly, as in the case of a service station robbery.

However, in the real world such distinctions may be difficult to sustain. Context is everything.

Would BP, or any other oil company for that matter, consider itself free from an obligation to do anything when in a "drive-off", for example, the defaulting driver rips off a petrol hose, showering a customer with raw petrol, on the pretext that company policy prohibits engaging an aggressive or dangerous customer?

Does that policy also extend to the consequences of the aggressor's actions? Or where the aggressive customer is holding an innocent, unrelated child and threatening to pour petrol over the child and ignite it unless his demands are met?

Would BP still counsel "hands off" until the authorities arrive, even if the child's life is in immediate danger? BP's complacent attitude in the case reported is nothing more than corporate cowardice masquerading as an employment contract issue, that has no regard for the safety of those who actually purchase its products.

There is another legal duty that BP might be well advised to heed. Anyone who undertakes to do any act, such as making sure that the forecourt and the service area of a service station are safe for customers, is under a legal duty to do that act, with criminal consequences if the duty is not discharged.

Surely providing a safe environment for customers to purchase petrol and other items from a service station also includes ensuring that they are not at risk of harm from robbers and other small-minded bullies who commonly take advantage of the relative insecurity of such places to perform their criminal acts. That would seem to be a fair reciprocity. I'll buy your goods. You ensure that I am safe as I do so.

If some future robbery committed on the precincts of a BP service station were to result in the death or serious injury of a customer, BP might be hard put to argue, under its current policy, that it had taken appropriate precautions to prevent or minimise the risk of such an event occurring.

Perhaps it is time the company looked again at its security protocols to ensure that its customers are not exposed unnecessarily to such dangerous risks.

* Warren Brookbanks is professor of law at the University of Auckland.