Dive Brief:
- Waffle House is not liable for an incident in which an employee of a Florida restaurant stabbed a customer in the face during an argument, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals held Friday.
- The incident in Byndom v. Waffle House, Inc. began with an argument that occurred between the employee and the customer during the employee’s shift. A supervisor sent the employee home. The alleged incident culminated when the customer “got in [the employee’s] face” and the employee — who was leaving the store — responded by stabbing the customer with a waffle pick he had stored in his pocket.
- Police arrested the employee, who was not criminally charged for the incident. The customer, who sustained eye and ear injuries, sued Waffle House for alleged negligence, vicarious liability and negligent hiring, retention, supervision and training under Florida state law. A district court granted summary judgment to Waffle House on all claims and the 11th Circuit affirmed.
Dive Insight:
In Florida, an employer’s “premises liability” for an employee’s act of violence turns on whether the act in question is “reasonably foreseeable,” the 11th Circuit explained in its decision. The court added that foreseeability can be established in this context by showing that a business had knowledge of an assailant’s propensity for violence or actual or constructive knowledge, based on past experience, that dangerous, disorderly conduct was likely.
The customer in Byndom had no proof upon which a reasonable jury could conclude that Waffle House could have foreseen the stabbing, the 11th Circuit said. It noted that co-workers of the employee who committed the stabbing testified that he was not violent and that no similar physical altercations had occurred at the restaurant.
Similarly, the court held that the plaintiff’s vicarious liability claim failed because the employee acted outside of the scope of his employment. After the initial argument, the employee left the restaurant with his belongings, only to return moments later because he had forgotten his phone. The incident occurred while the employee was in the process of leaving after collecting his phone.
“The employee had clocked out, left the restaurant, and only reentered the restaurant for a purely personal reason,” the 11th Circuit said. “There are no facts indicating that any of [the employee’s] actions after leaving the restaurant were motivated by his employment duties.”
The plaintiff’s negligent hiring, retention, training and supervision claims also failed because he had put forth insufficient evidence to show that Waffle House could have foreseen that the employee would stab him based on any facts regarding the employee’s unfitness for employment.
The worker in the case did have a criminal background prior to his hiring, with one arrest for possessing a firearm and battery of a law enforcement officer at a school where he was a student as well as one misdemeanor conviction of driving under the influence. However, neither incident had a sufficient connection to the customer’s stabbing, the court said.
“These past criminal actions did not suggest that [the worker] might violently stab someone in the face,” the 11th Circuit said. “It is also significant that [the worker] was vouched for by his mother, who was a long-time, trusted Waffle House employee in a management position.”
Finally, the plaintiff did not show that Waffle House was negligent in training its employees, including that his stabbing was a reasonably foreseeable consequence of the chain’s failure to have a policy regarding waffle pick storage, the court held. Moreover, the manager on duty followed Waffle House’s deescalation policy in sending the employee home, the court found, and this decision did not lead to the stabbing.
The 11th Circuit issued a similar decision last year in the case of a Florida employee whose ex-partner, a former employee of the same employer, evaded workplace security measures to gain access to the employee and set her on fire. The employer in that case was not found liable, the court explained, because Florida law requires plaintiffs to show that an employer actually and proximately breached its legal duty to them, which the plaintiff in the case failed to do.
Such incidents have occurred against a backdrop of increasing U.S. workplace violence, according to an August 2025 report by online compliance training company Traliant. The company found that 30% of workers reported witnessing workplace violence against a co-worker in 2025, up from 25% in 2024.
HR teams can address potential workplace violence by customers and other external parties by implementing deescalation policies, enlisting on-site security personnel and training employees on harassment prevention and reporting, sources previously told HR Dive.