The best answer to this is yes, you may have a case but it would be case specific. Clearly, if someone purposely injured you, you would have an intentional tort case (Battery, etc.) against the person that injured you. In order for there to be liability against the property owner, you would have to prove some form of negligence and the most common case would be a negligent security case. These cases are often proven by looking at the crime grid and determining whether there have been crimes in the area, and that way you could show a jury that the business or restaurant in this instance is on constructive notice of prior crimes in the area. There are many more issues that would need to be looked into. Did the restaurant have any security? Was there lighting in the parking lot? Was there an off duty policeman for the restaurant? Are there any other security measure being taken by the restaurant to prevent criminal activities. The difficult thing is that it is not possible for a business to prevent ALL crimes. The issues in negligent security cases often fall upon whether the crime in the particular case was foreseeable and whether the security was sufficient given the area. These are not easy cases and expert testimony of some type of security expert is generally needed to prove such a case.
