Minnesota Supreme Court to Review Civil Case Linked to 2019 Stabbing Death at Red Carpet Nightclub

(KNSI) – The Minnesota Supreme Court says it will review the case brought by the family of a man stabbed to death inside the Red Carpet Nightclub in 2019.

In December 2019, Bryant Stephenson, Christopher Lamar Johnson and Lawrence Johnson were seen attacking a man on the dance floor when 29-year-old Unity McGill was standing nearby and stepped in to try and break it up. Lawrence Johnson is then seen on surveillance video hitting McGill and McGill fighting back. Christopher Johnson then attacks McGill, who again is seen fighting back. The three men were kicked out of the club but came back inside a short time later. Security cameras show the three men circle McGill, knocking him to the ground, where he was stabbed and beaten. McGill stumbled to the main entry, where he collapsed and later died from his injuries.

Stephenson, Christopher Johnson and Lawrence Johnson were convicted and sentenced to prison.

In January 2021, McGill’s family sued the three men and the Red Carpet in civil court, seeking compensation for his death. The lower court found the bar wasn’t liable for McGill’s death, and because they were already in prison, the men couldn’t pay the victim’s family. They took their case to the Minnesota Court of Appeals, and in May, the panel voted 2-1 in favor of a new trial against the Red Carpet, meaning the issue could go to the Minnesota Supreme Court.

The Minnesota Association of Justice asked Waite Park-based law firm Bradshaw and Bryant to craft an independent review and opinion by legal experts unconnected to the trial for the appeals judges to review.

At the heart of the lower court’s decision was a jury instruction that was confusing and redundant.

Attorney Tucker Issacson helped craft the brief. Isaacson explains that the case hinges on whether the Red Carpet is partly responsible for McGill’s death based on the innkeeper liability statute. “So if you go into a bar, they have to protect you from foreseeable things, from foreseeable damages that could happen. So, if you know that there’s a rough person in the bar, and that rough person hurt somebody, then they [the bar] could be liable for that.”

According to court filings, the Red Carpet policy bans people from returning to the club that night if they’re kicked out. Security staff was accused of failing to notify other guards that the three men had been told to leave and were banned from coming back inside.

The high court will look at four alleged issues with the case.

First, Alvin Glay is the trustee appointed by the family who argued for a change in legal instruction about the liability of an innkeeper. Glay wanted to include the idea of “foreseeability” (whether something could have been predicted) in the instruction.

Second, Glay claims the Court of Appeals reversed the trial court’s decision based on the idea that foreseeability is part of the direct cause or the immediate reason something happened. Glay says this was a mistake because foreseeability only belongs in the instruction about superseding cause, or a factor that could interrupt the direct chain of events leading to harm, not direct cause.

The court will examine whether Glay caused any errors by asking for the change and should not be allowed to benefit from it.

Finally, the panel will consider whether the Court of Appeals failed to apply the proper standard of review when the evidence supported the verdict.

The questions before the high court ask whether the District Court made a mistake by allowing the jury to compare Red Carpet’s negligence with the intentional actions of Stephenson, Christopher Johnson and Lawrence Johnson.

There is no timetable for when the Supreme Court will decide whether to take the case.

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