Store Employees Chasing a Shoplifter Knock Down a 69-Year-Old Bystander, Jury Awards $8 Million

In 2020, Galo, then 69, was walking with a friend past a Save Smart store in Newark's Ironbound section when the store's electronic security alarm went off and five untrained employees ran out after a suspected shoplifter. Testimony at trial established that false alarms, caused by cashiers failing to remove security tags from purchased items, had become routine at the store, so employees were used to heading out the door without knowing whether a theft had actually occurred.

The fleeing man reached the public street, where the first employees to catch up tried to detain him. He broke free and collided with Galo, starting her fall. A Save Smart employee, estimated at 210 pounds, then ran directly into her. Galo was thrown to the cement sidewalk and struck her head, which knocked her unconscious and caused a subdural hematoma. Three store employees ran past her without stopping to help, and only after the suspect was detained did anyone come back to assist her.

Galo sued in December 2020, naming Save Smart, store manager Daljit Singh, and property owner Ironbound Plaza Urban Renewal among the defendants, and pleading negligence, assault and battery, and premises liability. The store employed 28 people. It had no security or loss-prevention training and no guidance on how to confront a suspected shoplifter, and its witnesses said in depositions that any employee could try to stop one.

The case was tried before Judge Jeffrey B. Beacham. The plaintiff's experts included a neuropsychologist and a neuroradiologist, along with a security and use-of-force expert who testified that the injuries followed the store owner's failure to train and supervise employees on approaching and detaining shoplifters. Medical testimony described brain injury that permanently affected her quality of life, and her counsel said she was left with a mild traumatic brain injury. The defense, handled by Timothy J. Jaeger and Josie A. Scanlan of Marshall Dennehey, called its own neuropsychologist, neurologist and neuroradiologist and argued that her cognitive decline came from strokes she had suffered before the incident.

On January 15, 2025, the Essex County jury rejected that defense and found that Save Smart was negligent and that its negligence was a proximate cause of Galo's injuries. The jury also found the fleeing suspect negligent but concluded his conduct was not a proximate cause of her fall, which left the store carrying the whole verdict. Jurors unanimously awarded $8 million, all of it for pain and suffering, with no separate award for economic damages.

Galo was represented at trial by Barry R. Eichen of Eichen Crutchlow Zaslow and Dean R. Maglione of The Maglione Firm. No notice of appeal has been reported in the case.