Braun v. Soldier of Fortune Magazine, Inc.
United States Court of Appeals for the Eleventh Circuit
968 F.2d 1110 (1992)
Soldier of Fortune Magazine (defendant) ran a personal ad for mercenary Michael Savage advertising himself as a "Gun for Hire"; two men responded seeking to hire Savage to murder Richard Braun, and Savage and two accomplices carried out the killing. Savage testified that although he received one legitimate bodyguard job, the overwhelming majority of the 30-40 weekly callers wanted him to murder, assault, or kidnap someone. Braun's sons (plaintiffs) sued the magazine for negligence; the jury, instructed it could find liability only if the ad posed an unreasonable, identifiable risk of harm a reasonably prudent publisher would have recognized, awarded $4.3 million, and the magazine appealed, arguing First Amendment concerns and lack of proximate cause due to the intervening criminal acts.
Whether negligence that creates a reasonably foreseeable risk of criminal acts remains the proximate cause of the resulting injury, notwithstanding the intervening criminal conduct of third parties.