Providing private security services is not an easy business to operate. It is labor-intensive, regulatorily laden and for the most part, a business saddled with risks, dangers, and the constant unknowns that you cannot prepare for.

But there is yet another aspect of the contract private security business that many upstarts do not include in their start-up estimates. And it’s something that companies who are currently in operation are just now beginning to understand that this thing is more than just part of the cost of doing business but a real threat to putting them out of business.

Lawsuits.

As of 2020, annually, there are more than 100 million cases are filed in state trial courts, while roughly 400,000 cases are filed in federal trial courts.

These numbers do not include notices of a lawsuit or the number of “Demand Letters” that are sent and resolved prior to the filing of a lawsuit.

In The United States, anyone can file a lawsuit by merely filing an online form and paying a filing fee ranging from $39 to $150 for small claims and upwards of $500-$1500 for lawsuits that have claims of larger amounts of money, substantial damage or who have left damages to be decided by the court.

The civil court clerk’s office processes the filings and sends out notices of the pending lawsuit to the defendants for no additional fees.

You do not need an attorney for most small claims cases.

These are the types of cases that are not part of the trial court’s dockets and are put on a docket calendar by the clerk’s office heard by a judge. This type of case takes just a few minutes and no more than thirty minutes most of the time. And yes, they are very much like what you might see on one of those daytime court reality shows. The amounts that small claim courts can hear vary from state to state but most range between $5000-$10,000.

Each year the number of lawsuits against protection agencies, their employees, and the clients who hire security firms have increased substantially, and thus, many insurance companies who provide these specialty policies have continued to raise their premiums or gotten out that area of insurance.

The rise of the number of security agencies in operation and the use of their services have increased both the claims of wrongdoing and the volume of actual lawsuits filed against the security industry.

Many of the claims involve excessive use of force, false arrest, assaults, and lethal force incidents.

In 2018, an Atlanta woman claimed that a security officer had kidnapped her when he found her using the apartment laundry facility after hours. Because the woman could not prove that she lived on the property, the security officer held her against her will for more than forty minutes while waiting for the police to arrive. Once officers arrived, they quickly determined that the woman was in fact a resident of the complex, and no charges were filed against her.

But she did file a lawsuit against the security firm and the apartment owner and later settled for an undisclosed amount.

On a Georgia law firm’s website, an advertisement states that the firm has cases against security guard firms and further states “The value of an assault and battery case against a security guard and their employer could be over $100,000. The amount may increase to over $300,000 if you were seriously injured or unlawfully detained.

Another law firm’s website states: If you have been injured by a security guard or bouncer at a store, nightclub, or other places of business, you may be eligible to file a claim for significant monetary compensation. Security guards are expected to use reasonable force when apprehending someone. They are also expected to conduct their business in a non-negligent manner. If you have been injured after being attacked by a security guard, you can sue the security guard company either for their negligence, or their negligent hiring.

There are also other websites that can be easily searched that explain how to file lawsuits against retailers, loss prevention or security officers for false detentions, false accusations of shoplifting or for assaulting them, and an array of other claims that can be made in a lawsuit filing.

A recent lawsuit resulted in a million-dollar jury verdict against a hospital and one of its security guards. The plaintiff, a hospital visitor, sued the hospital and the security guard for assault and battery, false imprisonment, and malicious prosecution.

A woman who accused a security guard of sexually assaulting her in Dallas Texas in 2018, won a judgment for thirteen million dollars against the employer of the security guard.

A study in 2019 by a consulting firm based in Boston Massachusetts found that of the lawsuits filed between 2009 and 2019, 46% were for assault or use of force, 15% was for unlawful arrest or detention, 11% for sexual assaults, 7% was for wrongful death and the rest was for miscellaneous and employee claims against the companies.

Another area of lawsuits against private security companies and their clients is called “inadequate protection” or negligence which is a claim that the security officer, his employer, and their client did not provide an adequate amount of security to protect a person against being injured, robbed, raped, or killed. These cases, although sometimes hard to litigate are won and sometimes settled for substantial amounts of money. In claims of negligence, plaintiffs and their attorney’s highlight areas of poor training of the security guard or the hiring of an unlicensed or unqualified security person.

In many states, laws require that properties be safe and secure for customers, residents, visitors, and the like. This obligation is not limited to putting a caution sign on a slippery wet floor or eliminating fire and tripping hazards. Commercial property owners also have an obligation to provide safety and security from foreseeable criminal activities especially when the property owner, manager or security firm is aware of previous crimes such as robberies, rapes, or assaults.

Tort claims have also been steadily rising against those public agencies sworn to enforce the law and those private companies who are hired to protect others. The Ferguson, Missouri riot era sparked a new wave of lawsuits, often without merit, and again after May 25, 2020, when George Floyd murder, another wave of lawsuits began burden down the courts with claims of assaults, unlawful arrests, and an array of other claims filed against both the police and private security.

Court cases alleging false arrest against retailers and their loss prevention staff have also increased causing some stores to change their policies of when to stop a suspected shoplifter and when to just let them leave with the merchandise. Some loss prevention experts say that this change has not only increased massive shoplifting attacks on stores but that it has also put employees including security in greater danger.

Legal challenges are also changing the landscape of a security officer’s authority.

“Unfortunately, the law is not always kind to those who are in their judgment just trying to do the best thing or the right thing based on an emergency or threat situation,” says Tod Stephens, an industrial security attorney with Armstrong Teasdale, LLP, a law firm headquartered in St. Louis, Missouri. “Even the best intentions in trying to protect an employee or a visitor from an emergency or threat situation can later be misconstrued into an unwanted touching or unwanted confinement, which can lead later to either criminal or civil litigation against the security officer or guard.”

While many states have written statutes that allow a private citizen to make a private person arrest, others have begun reducing their authority to only incidents involving a felony witnessed by the person making the arrest.

In March 2021, Georgia legislators voted to appeal their Civil War-era law allowing private citizen arrest authority after an African American man was killed by several men trying to arrest him for a presumed crime. The law, which allowed any citizen to “arrest” another if a crime was committed “within his immediate knowledge,” has been replaced with specific language to provide for citizen detainment in specific circumstances, including shopkeepers who witness shoplifters and restaurant owners and employees who witness “dine and dash” customers.

“The civil action of false imprisonment or confinement will be defined differently in different jurisdictions,” Richard McCann, a police chief and founder of Private Officer International, a private security and police organization. said. False imprisonment and false confinement are generally considered acts that involve a person or organization instructing another person under threat of force or punishment to not leave an area.

“Sometimes people think that they are being arrested when in fact they are lawfully being questioned or detained. However, looking at the way that some state statutes are written, allegations can arise when a security guard or officer simply instructs an individual that they are not allowed to leave the premises while the police are responding.  And therefore, extensive training in communications, de-escalation and the law is necessary for anyone working in any area of security today.

“In most situations, security officers including loss prevention personnel have the same ability as any other private citizen to detain someone for a crime they believe has been committed,” he says.

Insurance companies that once wrote policies for armed security guard companies now no longer accept those types of applications and others only write insurance for companies that only provide unarmed security officers.

Another challenge to our legal system in recent years has been the demand by some to take away protection offered to sworn law enforcement officers known as “Qualified Immunity”.

Qualified immunity is a judicially created doctrine that shields government officials including law enforcement officers from being held personally liable for constitutional violations or being criminally prosecuted while they are performing their sworn duties within the law and within their department policy.

But in the past few years, activists and some politicians want this protection to be taken away from law enforcement leaving them to be exposed especially to civil lawsuits even when they have correctly done their jobs. This would mean having to defend themselves dozens of times a year or more for civil claims that have no merits.

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis signed a sweeping law enforcement reform bill in June of this year, taking away that shield that protected the police. The Enhance Law Enforcement Integrity Act (SB20-217) allows plaintiffs to bypass “qualified immunity,” and ends that protection for all law enforcement.

Other states have tried to follow like Illinois and Virginia, where bills that would make it easier to sue police officers for violating a person’s constitutional rights died in the making.

Nonetheless, police officers and police agencies are being sued in record numbers with most of the lawsuits being settled before they ever make it to a courtroom.

In 2017, Private Officer International tracked more than 3000 lawsuits nationwide that had been filed against private security businesses but there is no way of knowing how many of those were withdrawn or settled prior to a court date.

Insurance premium costs are often an underestimated expense associated with the security industry and one can increase almost overnight said, Chief McCann.

Some recent lawsuits: