Sanders v. Simon Property Group, L.P. (The Galleria Houston Parking-Garage Shooting Negligent-Security Suit)
The family of Anthony Sanders, a 30-year-old Marine Corps veteran shot and killed in a parking garage at Houston's Galleria mall on June 3, 2025, filed a negligent-security suit in Harris County District Court against Simon Property Group, HG Galleria LLC, and security contractors Allied Universal Security Services and GardaWorld Security Services, along with the individuals accused of the shooting. The complaint's central allegation is that the two suspects had previously been banned from the mall -- and were captured on video being removed by security more than once, including the day before the fatal shooting -- yet the property had no system in place to actually keep banned individuals out.
Why it matters
Shifts the negligent-security foreseeability inquiry away from a property's general crime history and onto something more concrete and harder for a defendant to dismiss at the pleading stage: whether a mall enforced its own previously-issued bans against the specific individuals who went on to commit the violence. Any commercial property that maintains a formal trespass/ban list -- malls, casinos, large retail centers -- should treat the case as a reason to audit whether its ban-enforcement process (facial recognition, security briefings, access-control flags) actually functions in practice, not just on paper.
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