Source: https://law.justia.com/cases/california/court-of-appeal/4th/11/1392.html
Timestamp: 2019-04-23 16:01:05+00:00

Document:
JUDITH C. DAVIS, Plaintiff and Appellant, v. RANDY GASCHLER et al., Defendants and Respondents.
Anthony G. Arlen for Plaintiff and Appellant.
Greve, Clifford, Deipenbrock & Paras, Gary S. Decker and William L. Baker for Defendants and Respondents.
In this action for damages arising from a dog bite, plaintiff Judith C. Davis appeals from a summary judgment entered in favor of the dog's owners, defendants Randy Gaschler and Linda Gaschler, on the ground that plaintiff's reasonable implied assumption of the risk provided a complete defense. We will conclude recent California Supreme Court authority on the subject compels reversal of the judgment.
"On January 7, 1988, Mrs. Arleane Cumbra and her daughter, Mrs. Beauchamp, who are independent witnesses and not parties to this action, came upon a dog lying in Missouri Flat Road which had apparently been hit by a car. They stopped, wrapped the dog in a blanket because they believed an injured animal might 'bite and fight,' and were attempting to load the dog into the back of their car.
"The dog [which had not been vaccinated] was examined for rabies and the initial tests were equivocal, with some indication that the dog might be rabid. Nine months later, confirmatory tests were negative for rabies.
"Because the initial tests were equivocal, plaintiff was contacted and underwent a series of in[n]oculations for rabies. Plaintiff filed an action for [11 Cal. App. 4th 1396] negligence and negligent infliction of emotion[al] distress against defendants, owners of the animal, claiming that her arthritic condition, fatigue, and depression were caused by the dog bite and/or rabies treatment."
Plaintiff's first cause of action was labeled "Strict Liability" but alleged both strict liability under the "dog bite statute" (Civ. Code, § 3342 fn. 2 ) and negligence in allowing the dog to roam loose.
Defendants moved for summary judgment on alternative grounds that (1) Civil Code section 3342 did not apply to the facts of this case; (2) plaintiff's assumption of the risk provided a complete defense to both strict liability and negligence; and (3) there was no proximate causation.
The trial court entered judgment in favor of defendants on the ground that plaintiff's reasonable implied assumption of the risk barred recovery. Plaintiff appeals.
In Ford, Justice Arabian authored a lead opinion in which no other justice joined. In Knight, Justice George penned the lead opinion in which Chief Justice Lucas and Justice Arabian concurred. Justice Mosk provided a majority vote with a concurring opinion that agreed for the most part with the lead opinion. (Knight, supra, 3 Cal. 4th 296 at p. 321 (conc. & dis. opn. of Mosk, J.).) Because Knight commands a strong plurality, and because it speaks generally to the doctrine of implied assumption of the risk, we will follow Knight here.
[3a] Applying Knight to this case, we conclude the judgment must be reversed. Defendants, as the parties moving for summary judgment, had the burden to establish the absence of any basis for recovery under plaintiff's causes of action for negligence and negligent infliction of emotional distress. Under Knight, this means they had the burden to show that this is a case of primary assumption of risk-where, by virtue of the nature of the activity and the parties' relationship to the activity, the defendants owe no legal duty to plaintiff. Otherwise, the case is subject to comparative fault principles and is thus inappropriate for summary judgment.
Here, defendants have not shown the absence of a legal duty to plaintiff.
 We note it has been authoritatively held that "[i]n adopting section 3342 of the Civil Code, the Legislature did not intend to render inapplicable such defenses as assumption of risk or wilfully invited injury." (Gomes v. Byrne (1959) 51 Cal. 2d 418, 420 [333 P.2d 754].) [3b] Adopting this holding to the view of assumption of risk under Knight leads to the conclusion that if the defendant owes no duty to the plaintiff by virtue of the plaintiff's primary assumption of the risk, liability is not imposed by Civil Code section 3342. That is, such cases are outside the reach of that section. Such an assumption of risk does not defeat liability; rather the statute does not reach that circumstance. For example, it might be determined that the statute does not reach the circumstance of a dog biting a veterinarian during treatment. In that case, primary assumption of risk would continue to operate because the statute was not designed to protect veterinarians, hence there is no duty.
Here, nothing in the record suggests to us that Civil Code section 3342 would be inapplicable to this plaintiff in these circumstances. Defendants admit their dog was running loose when it was struck by the car. They do contend the Civil Code imposes a duty on the dog owner to keep a dog from biting someone only while it is roaming loose, and the dog in this case was not roaming but was immobilized by its injuries and would not have presented any threat to plaintiff but for her voluntarily approaching the dog.
However, Civil Code section 3342 cannot reasonably be read as applicable only to dogs while they are physically running loose, because it imposes liability on the owner regardless of whether the dog is restrained and regardless of whether the dog is on or off the owner's premises. We thus agree with plaintiff that the statute is not designed merely to prevent dogs from doing harm while they rove but to prevent dogs from becoming a hazard to the community. We do not believe that plaintiff's voluntary act of helping the injured dog would remove her from the class of persons to be protected by the dog bite statute.
Defendants also owed a further duty of care to plaintiff: to vaccinate their dog with an antirabies vaccine. Health and Safety Code section 1920, [11 Cal. App. 4th 1400] subdivision (b), provides in part that "[e]very dog owner, after his or her dog attains the age of four months, shall, at intervals of time not more often than once a year, as may be prescribed by the state department, procure its vaccination by a licensed veterinarian with a canine antirabies vaccine ...." A county ordinance contains the same requirement.
We conclude defendants have not established the absence of a duty of care.
As we understand Knight, under the firefighter's rule (or the veterinarian variant) the absence of duty is established by the nature of the activity and the relationship of the parties. Thus, the plaintiff is employed and compensated for work that carries with it certain hazards. Here, plaintiff was not employed or otherwise compensated for helping injured dogs. Nor was there an employment relationship or any relationship between plaintiff and defendants. Defendants cite no cases applying the firefighter's rule or veterinarian's rule where there was no relationship between the plaintiff and defendant and the plaintiff was not engaged in an activity for compensation. (See Prays v. Perryman (1989) 213 Cal. App. 3d 1133 [262 Cal. Rptr. 180] [dog groomer who had not yet decided whether to groom skittish dog when it bit her had not assumed control of dog, hence had not assumed risk of being bitten].) Neither the "veterinarian's rule" nor the "firefighter's rule" applies here.
The judgment is reversed. Plaintiff shall recover costs on appeal.
Blease, Acting P. J., and Nicholson, J., concurred.
FN . It is undisputed that defendants are the dog's owners, and the dog was loose on the day in question. Apparently, defendants were not present at the scene and were unaware of these events at the time they occurred.
FN 2. Civil Code section 3342, subdivision (a), provides in part: "The owner of any dog is liable for the damages suffered by any person who is bitten by the dog while in a public place or lawfully in a private place, including the property of the owner of the dog, regardless of the former viciousness of the dog or the owner's knowledge of such viciousness. ..."
FN 4. The parties also note the existence of a county "leash law" ordinance. (El Dorado County Ord., § 6.12.070.) El Dorado County Ordinance section 6.12.070(D) provides in part: "Any person may take up and deliver to the animal control officer any animal at large on public property or upon the person's private property." Because we find a duty in Civil Code section 3342, we do not have to address this ordinance.
FN 5. Evidence Code section 669 provides in part: "(a) The failure of a person to exercise due care is presumed if: [¶] (1) He violated a statute, ordinance, or regulation of a public entity; [¶] (2) The violation proximately caused death or injury to person or property; [¶] (3) The death or injury resulted from an occurrence of the nature which the statute, ordinance, or regulation was designed to prevent; and [¶] (4) The person suffering the death or the injury to his person or property was one of the class of persons for whose protection the statute, ordinance, or regulation was adopted. [¶] (b) This presumption may be rebutted by proof that: [¶] (1) The person violating the statute, ordinance, or regulation did what might reasonably be expected of a person of ordinary prudence, acting under similar circumstances, who desired to comply with the law; ..."
FN 6. We note that Nelson v. Hall, supra, 165 Cal. App. 3d 709, was an action alleging violation of the dog bite statute (Civ. Code, § 3342; fn. 2, ante). Nevertheless, we do not believe that statute would defeat primary assumption of risk under the Supreme Court's recent pronouncements, because it would most likely be concluded that the dog bite statute was not intended to protect veterinarians.
FN 7. Because the recent Knight decision controls this case and defeats defendants' entitlement to summary judgment, we need not address the parties' further points and authorities regarding whether plaintiff had knowledge of the specific risk of rabies, whether the "rescue doctrine" cancels out the assumption of risk defense, whether plaintiff's conduct was unreasonable, and whether the assumption of risk doctrine should be abolished.

References: v. 
 § 3342
 v. 
 v. 
 § 6
 v. 
 § 3342