Source: http://www.lawlink.com/research/CaseLevel3/83786
Timestamp: 2019-04-22 12:25:29+00:00

Document:
STEVEN MAY, an Incompetent Person, etc., et al., Plaintiffs and Appellants, v. NINE PLUS PROPERTIES, INC., Defendant and Respondent; CSAC EXCESS INSURANCE AUTHORITY, Intervener and Appellant.
Law Offices of Tony J. Tanke, Tony J. Tanke; Law Offices of Gary L. Simms, Gary L. Simms; The Drivon Law Firm, Laurence E. Drivon and Davey L. Turner; Tabak Law Firm and Stewart M. Tabak for Plaintiffs and Appellants.
Hancock Rothert & Bunshoft, Duanne Morris, Max H. Stern, William S. Berman and Kate Cutler; Thayer, Harvey, Gregerson, Hedberg & Jackson, Dale H. Thayer and Graham S. Lopez for Defendant and Respondent.
The essential facts are undisputed.
Don and Denise Lillegard own Nine Plus Properties, Inc. which, in turn, owns and operates a Maaco Auto Painting & Body Works franchise in Modesto (Maaco). Maaco has a shop where it repairs and paints cars and trucks, and an adjoining storage lot where it parks the vehicles when it is not working on them. There usually are about 40 vehicles in the lot, but may be as few as 20 or as many as 100. Many are left in the lot overnight.
Maaco's practice originally was to lock the vehicles and keep the keys on a board in the office. But during a fire in the lot in 1994, a fireman commented to Don Lillegard that "it would be nice to be able to move those cars." At that point, Maaco began leaving the vehicles unlocked, with the keys in the ignition.
The lot is surrounded by a chainlink fence topped by three strands of barbed wire and reinforced with weather-resistent strips in the links to make it more difficult to climb. An infrared motion detection system is installed just inside the fence line, and monitored during nonbusiness hours by a security company that notifies police if an intrusion occurs. There are video cameras trained on different parts of the lot, and warning signs posted on the outside of the fence. The shop also is alarmed, as are the doors leading from the shop to the storage area.
In the 10 months preceding the theft, the alarm systems in Maaco's shop and lot had transmitted a total of 13 intrusion calls to the security company. A Toyota had been stolen from the lot in September of 2001. And on July 12, 2002, just two weeks before Corralejo took the truck, someone had stolen a Mustang by crashing it though the locked gate. After that, Maaco started parking a forklift in front of the gate at night.
Soon after the theft of the Mustang, police officers suggested to the Lillegards that Maaco should stop leaving the keys in vehicles parked overnight in its storage lot. But Maaco continued the practice; the truck Corralejo stole was unlocked and had the keys in the ignition.
On June 25, 2003, Steve May through his wife Diana May as his guardian ad litem, and Diana May individually, filed the present action against Maaco for negligence. They later amended the complaint to add a claim for products liability against the manufacturer of Sergeant May's patrol car, the Ford Motor Company.
On March 16, 2004, the trial court granted the CSAC Excess Insurance Authority (CSAC) leave to intervene in the action, and CSAC filed a complaint in intervention the same day. CSAC alleged it was responsible for paying workers' compensation benefits to Sergeant May on behalf of the City of Modesto to the extent those benefits exceeded one million dollars, as they had by then. On this basis, CSAC joined in the Mays's claim that Maaco was liable in negligence for their injuries.
The Mays then moved for reconsideration based on what they represented was new evidence of the similarities between the Mustang and GMC pickup thefts, and of Maaco's location in a high-crime area. The court denied the motion.
Judgment was entered on December 29, 2004. The Mays filed a timely notice of appeal.
The Supreme Court, in upholding the judgment, characterized the determinative issue as one of duty. "[I]t is necessary to consider the scope of the duty of the owner of an automobile to control his property for the protection of persons on the public streets." (Richards, supra, "43 Cal.2d at p. 63.) "[I]t has generally been held," the court observed, "that the owner of an automobile is under no duty to persons who may be injured by its use to keep it out of the hands of a third person in the absence of facts putting the owner on notice that the third person is incompetent to handle it." (Ibid.) It is not foreseeable, the court concluded, that a car thief will be an incompetent driver, or at least the thief is no more likely to be an incompetent driver than one to whom the owner knowingly entrusts the car.
"The problem is not answered by pointing out that there is a foreseeable risk of negligent driving on the part of thieves. There is a foreseeable risk of negligent driving whenever anyone drives himself or lends his car to another. That risk has not been considered so unreasonable, however, that an owner is negligent merely because he drives himself, or lends his car to another, in the absence of knowledge on his part of his own or the other's incompetence. [143 Cal.App.4th 1545] Moreover, by leaving the key in the car the owner does not assure that it will be driven, as he does when he lends it to another. At most he creates a risk that it will be stolen and driven. The risk that it will be negligently driven is thus materially less than in the case in which the owner entrusts his car to another for the very purpose of the latter's use.
 The court then went on to consider, and reject, Richards' contention the existence of a duty in key-in-the-ignition cases is properly a question for the trier of fact.
A year later, in Richardson v. Ham (1955) 44 Cal.2d 772 (Richardson), the court found the sort of special circumstances to which it had alluded in Richards (e.g., a car left in front of a school with the keys in it, or left in the control of an intoxicated passenger). Richardson involved a bulldozer left overnight at a construction site at the top of a mesa, without an easily-installed lock that would have prevented it from being started. Some intoxicated young men started the bulldozer, which then caused considerable damage to the nearby property. The court distinguished this situation from the one in Richards in that both the type of foreseeable intervening conduct by a thief, and the risks created by such conduct, were appreciably greater.
"Automobiles do not arouse curiosity, and ordinarily the only appreciable risk that they will be set in motion if they are left unattended arises from the possibility of their being stolen. The record in the present case, on the other hand, shows that defendants' bulldozers aroused curiosity and attracted spectators, while they were in operation as well as while they were parked for the night. Moreover, curious persons had been known to climb on them, and it could reasonably be inferred that they were attractive to children when left unattended at the end of the working day. The evidence is therefore sufficient to justify the conclusion that there was a reasonably foreseeable risk that defendants' bulldozers might be tampered with when left unattended.
 In Hergenrether v. East (1964) 61 Cal.2d 440 (Hergenrether), the Supreme Court explained the exception to the Richards rule as follows: "Special circumstances which impose a greater potentiality of foreseeable risk or more serious injury, or require a lesser burden of preventative action, may be deemed to impose an unreasonable risk on, and a legal duty to, third persons." (Id. at p. 444.) In Hergenrether, two construction workers parked their two-ton truck, full of equipment, in what was plainly a blighted area of town, unlocked and with the key inside. The truck was stolen, and subsequently involved in an accident that seriously injured the plaintiffs. The trial court granted judgment for the defendants notwithstanding the verdict. The Supreme Court, in reversing the judgment, identified several factors amounting to "special circumstances."
 Similar circumstances led the Supreme Court to reach the same conclusion in Palma v. U.S. Industrial Fasteners, Inc. (1984) 36 Cal.3d 171 (Palma), which involved a large flatbed truck parked overnight in an unfenced lot in a high-crime area, with the door unlocked, the window open, and the keys inside. The operative test in key-in-the-ignition cases, the court explained, is the foreseeability of harm.
The last Supreme Court opinion to address the "special circumstances" exception was Ballard v. Uribe (1986) 41 Cal.3d 564 (Ballard). Like Richardson, Hergenrether, and Palma, Ballard involved a construction vehicle: an "aerial manlift" consisting of a basket mounted on a boom ladder attached to the bed of a truck. The lift was unsafe to use -- a stabilizing cable had been removed for repairs -- but it was left nonetheless in a construction yard with the keys in the ignition, the controls unlocked, and no warning signs. A worker at the site, unaware of its condition, attempted to use the lift and was injured. A jury returned a verdict for the worker, and the owner of the boom appealed, claiming, among other things, that the trial court had given an incorrect instruction regarding an owner's duty of care. The Supreme Court found the error was harmless, because, under Richardson and Hergenrether, the owner clearly owed a duty to potential users of the lift.
The plaintiff in Enders v. Apcoa, Inc. (1976) 55 Cal.App.3d 897 (Enders) was a police officer who was injured when a stolen car he was pursuing collided with his patrol car. The stolen car had been taken 24 hours earlier from a parking lot operated by Apcoa. As it did routinely, Apcoa had left the car in its lot with the doors unlocked and the [143 Cal.App.4th 1550] key in the ignition. The trial court granted summary judgment in favor of Apcoa in reliance on Richards.
The Enders court took exception to this statement, noting there was no evidence in Richards of a police pursuit. While the Enders court's premise was correct, i.e., there had been no police pursuit in Richards, the conclusion the court drew from it mistook the nature of the Richards foreseeability test, as we will discuss shortly.
Enders was followed by two more police-pursuit cases in which the courts held that evasive action by the thief was not a special circumstance exception to the Richards rule. In Hosking, supra, 98 Cal.App.3d 98, the manager of San Diego Marine drove his work truck to his mother-in-law's house at night and left it unattended in a nearby alley, with the lights on, the door open, the key in the ignition, and the engine running, while he went into her house for a few minutes. The truck was stolen, and it later collided with the plaintiff's car while the thief was attempting to flee the police. The plaintiff, in support of her claim the accident was reasonably foreseeable, offered evidence that the theft took place one block from a high school; that the type of truck was popular with juvenile auto thieves; that a vehicle is more likely to be stolen at night; that stolen vehicles are likely to be involved in a chase; and that the rate of accidents is higher for stolen vehicles than for others. The trial court found there were no special circumstances, and thus, no duty, and granted nonsuit for the defendants. (Hosking, supra, 98 Cal.App.3d at pp. 100-101.) The appellate court affirmed.
The second, post-Enders police-pursuit case was Avis, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th 221. Like Enders and Brooker, it involved a car stolen from a private parking lot: the Avis check-in area at the San Francisco Airport, an unfenced and poorly guarded lot where rental cars were regularly left unattended for as long as 45 minutes with the keys in them. Also like Enders, Avis had been warned about security problems, and other cars had been stolen from the check-in area. Seven days after the theft, the stolen car collided with the plaintiffs' car while being chased by police. The trial court denied Avis's motion for summary judgment; Avis petitioned the appellate court for a writ of mandate directing the lower court to grant the motion; and the appellate court issued the writ.
In reaching this conclusion, the Avis court criticized the Enders decision, which it said had "used questionable reasoning and stretched the 'special circumstances' doctrine too far." (Avis, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th at p. 230.) As to the conflict between Enders and Brooker, the court found Brooker to be the better reasoned decision.
"Examining Enders in the light shed by Ballard, we conclude that Enders, not Brooker, misinterpreted Richards. Although Richards did not involve a police chase, injuries to motorists in police chases (as a general kind of harm) were as much a foreseeable result from leaving a key in the ignition (a category of negligence) in Richards as they were in Enders. Yet, for policy reasons the Richards court found no duty. Even the possibility of injury during a police chase was not the 'special circumstance' which would create a duty to protect a motorist from negligent driving by a thief.
"By focusing on foreseeability, the Enders court bypassed the important policy questions involved in the duty analysis. Richards and the decisions following it have confirmed that, however foreseeable car theft and an accident by the thief may be, leaving an ordinary automobile unattended on the street with a key in the ignition does not create a duty to protect other motorists from the negligent driving of a thief.
"The Court concludes that while it may have been foreseeable by Maaco that another vehicle might be stolen from its enclosed lot in a manner similar to that in which the Mustang had been stolen[,] this was, at most, an increase in the risk of theft of another vehicle and was not equivalent to inviting or enticing an incompetent driver to operate a vehicle. As a matter of law, the Court concludes that Maaco's actions in leaving keys in the vehicles within its fenced enclosure does not create a duty to protect other motorists from the negligent driving of a person operating a vehicle that has been stolen from Maaco's premises."
The Mays begin their argument on appeal by asking us, in effect, to reassess the Supreme Court's duty analysis in Richards. They contend it was "highly foreseeable" a vehicle would be stolen from Maaco's lot and driven in a reckless manner; fn. 4 that the risk of serious injury to third persons in that event was great; and that the additional burden on Maaco to prevent thefts, by removing the keys from the cars, would have been minimal.
Finally, the Mays misapprehend the nature of the foreseeability test. The critical lesson to be derived from the Supreme Court's key-in-the-ignition decisions, they assert, is that "there is no broad or general rule of no duty" in such cases; instead the existence of a duty is a very fact-specific determination that will vary from case to case depending on the particular circumstances. "Essentially," the Mays conclude, "'special circumstances' are whatever circumstances that are deemed to make the [vehicle] owner's conduct unreasonable." The rule, they seem to be saying, is that there is no rule.
If this were true, duty would be a factual determination for the trier of fact to make in every instance. But, as the court explained in Ballard, it is not true.
 "The question of 'duty' is decided by the court, not the jury. [Citations.] As this court has explained, 'duty' is not an immutable fact of nature '"but only an expression of the sum total of those considerations of policy which lead the law to say that the particular plaintiff is entitled to protection."' [Citations.] In California, the general rule is that all persons have a duty '"to use ordinary care to prevent others being injured as the result of their conduct....'" [Citations.] Rowland [v. Christian (1968) 69 Cal.2d 108] enumerates a number of considerations, however, that have been taken into account by courts in various contexts to determine whether a departure from the general rule is appropriate: 'the major [considerations] are the foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered, [143 Cal.App.4th 1556] the moral blame attached to the defendant's conduct, the policy of preventing future harm, the extent of the burden to the defendant and consequences to the community of imposing a duty to exercise care with resulting liability for breach, and the availability, cost, and prevalence of insurance for the risk involved.' (Italics added [by the Ballard court].) [Citation.] The foreseeability of a particular kind of harm plays a very significant role in this calculus [citation], but a court's task--in determining 'duty'--is not to decide whether a particular plaintiff's injury was reasonably foreseeable in light of a particular defendant's conduct, but rather to evaluate more generally whether the category of negligent conduct at issue is sufficiently likely to result in the kind of harm experienced that liability may appropriately be imposed on the negligent party.
 The Supreme Court in Richards weighed these various considerations and determined that, as a general rule, the owner or bailee of an ordinary passenger vehicle does not owe a duty to third persons to protect them against the actions of a thief. While the court has since recognized an exception to the rule when special circumstances exist, this case does not fit within that exception. We see no significant difference between the circumstances in this case and those in Avis, where the court concluded "Avis's conduct of parking its cars in a negligently attended lot with keys in the ignitions did not create a duty to control the conduct of a thief." (Avis, supra, 12 Cal.App.4th at p. 233.) If anything, Maaco went to greater lengths to discourage theft than had Avis, and the thief's conduct here was the more unpredictable and extreme.
The concluding words of the Avis court bear repeating here.
Vartabedian, Acting P.J., and Gomes, J., concurred.
?FN 1. Maaco also asserted, as an additional ground for its motion, the common law doctrine known as the "firefighter's rule." The rule, which applies as well to police officers, provides generally that "a member of the public whose conduct precipitates the intervention of a police officer [does not] owe a duty of care to the officer with respect to the original negligence that caused the officer's intervention." (Neighbarger v. Irwin Industries, Inc. (1994) 8 Cal.4th 532, 538; Calatayud v. State of California (1998) 18 Cal.4th 1057, 1061-1063.) For reasons that will appear, we need not address this theory.
?FN 5. The Mays also claim the subsequent adoption in California of the doctrine of comparative fault (see Li v. Yellow Cab Co. (1975) 13 Cal.3d 804) undermined the Richards decision insofar as Richards was founded on the belief it would be unfair to hold a vehicle owner liable for all the harm caused by a thief. That would be a determination for the Supreme Court to make, which, as we have said, has twice declined to reconsider its Richards decision.

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