A blackletter rule of law is that failure to take reasonable steps to prevent unreasonable risk of injury from reasonably foreseeable accidents is negligence. Tennessee follows many jurisdictions with a balancing test to determine the extent of the precautions required. The burden of providing the precaution must not be greater than the potential harm.
For example, it would be unreasonably burdensome for a merchant to hire bodyguards to personally escort patrons from the parking lot, through their store to shop and then back to the visitors vehicle. The cost of such precaution would be prohibitive even though it would probably guarantee the shopper's safety. However, if a business is located in an area known as a high crime area, in other words it is foreseeable based upon past acts of crime that more crime may occur, and that business takes no action whatsoever to safeguard those it has invited is probably negligent when a crime does occur and a patron is injured.
This article from Florida illustrates some of these principles.
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