Opinion ID: 2634842
Heading Depth: 3
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: The Corporation's Potential Liability

Text: The Guerreros initially challenge the superior court's order granting summary judgment to the corporation. In issuing this order, the superior court found that nothing the corporation could have done would have prevented the harm. The court also found that the corporation's decision not to fence off the housing project or to warn tenants of the dangers posed by C Street traffic did not enhance those dangers. The court reasoned that Guerrero, upon leaving Loussac Manor, would have ended up on the same public sidewalk faced with the same choice of whether to cross the street at the designated areas regardless of any safety measures taken by the corporation. The court further noted that the location of the egress route did not eject[] children ... into a busy street but instead placed them on a public sidewalk that was separated from C Street by a guardrail. Given these circumstances, the court found that [t]he well-worn path is not dangerous, and concluded that, even if the corporation owed a duty to protect its tenants' children from some off-site dangers, this duty was vastly narrower than the one asserted by the Guerreros and did not extend to protection from the dangers of C Street. The Guerreros challenge this ruling. In Guerrero I we acknowledged that we had never addressed the issues of whether or when a landlord might have a duty to protect or warn tenants about dangers occurring on land adjacent to the landlord's premises. [18] We noted that other jurisdictions are split on this issue: [T]he traditional view  still the decided majority  weighs against imposing a duty to warn or otherwise protect tenants from dangers of traffic on adjacent streets over which the landlord has no right of possession, management, or control. But an emerging minority would impose a duty to protect or warn in some situations; these cases apply a standard of reasonable care under the totality of the circumstances that considers possession, management, and control over conditions at the accident site to be relevant factors but does not make their absence dispositive as a matter of law.[ [19] ] As in Guerrero I, we find it unnecessary here to resolve the general issue of off-site liability. Even if landlords have a duty to protect their tenants from some off-site dangers, we think that the record does not support the Guerreros' claim that the corporation had a duty to protect them from the dangers alleged in this case. A number of courts have held that, under certain circumstances, a landlord may have a duty to protect tenants from off-site dangers. In Udy v. Calvary Corporation, [20] a small child was severely injured when he chased a basketball into a major street that was immediately adjacent to his backyard. [21] Before renting the space for their mobile home, the parents had asked the landlord whether the road adjacent to the space experienced heavy traffic and indicated that, if so, they would not be interested in renting the space. [22] The landlord assured the parents that there had never been any problems as a result of the space's close proximity to the busy street. [23] The parents rented the space only to discover that traffic was much worse than they had been led to expect. They repeatedly asked for permission to build a fence around their yard, but their landlord repeatedly denied these requests. [24] The landlord argued that he had no duty to protect a tenant from dangers located outside the premises. [25] The Arizona Court of Appeals disagreed, ruling that a landlord's duty to his tenants is not as a matter of law circumscribed by the physical boundaries of the landlord's property. [26] The court broadly stated that a landlord must take such precautions for the tenants' safety as a reasonably prudent person would take under similar circumstances in light of the known and foreseeable risks. [27] But it also carefully narrowed its decision. The landlord in the case had conceded that the absence of a fence was a proximate cause of the accident; the court tailored its ruling to this concession: Harm that is caused, in whole or in part, by an activity or condition on particular premises cannot be viewed as unforeseeable as a matter of law merely because it happens to manifest itself beyond the property line. [28] In Barnes v. Black, [29] a private sidewalk connected the children's play area of an apartment complex with the apartment buildings; the sidewalk adjoined a driveway that sloped steeply downward to a busy street. [30] While riding his big wheel tricycle along the sidewalk, a child lost control and rolled down the steep driveway into busy traffic on the street below, where he was struck by a car and killed. [31] The defendant landlord argued that he had no duty to protect his tenants from unreasonable risk of injury off the premises on a public street over which [he] ha[d] no control. [32] On appeal from an order granting the landlord summary judgment, the California Court of Appeal rejected this argument, concluding that the duty of care encompasses a duty to avoid exposing persons to risks of injury that occur off site if the landowner's property is maintained in such a manner as to expose persons to an unreasonable risk of injury offsite. [33] In so concluding, the court distinguished an earlier California decision declining to hold the landlord liable after a child wandered from an apartment building into an adjacent street and was hit by a car. [34] Describing the earlier case, the Barnes court emphasized that its facts established no close connection between the defendant's conduct and the child's injuries [35]  a circumstance that the Barnes court viewed as disfavoring an off-site duty. [36] Considering the circumstances of its own case, the Barnes court found a significant difference, observing that conditions on the landlord's property  the configuration of the private sidewalk and the driveway  had directly contributed to the accident by causing the child to be ejected into the public street. [37] Barnes thus reversed the trial court's order of dismissal. [38] These cases and other similar decisions [39] highlight several useful factors to consider in deciding if an off-site duty arose here: (1) whether the hazard was immediately adjacent to the corporation's property; (2) whether the corporation had any right or ability to control or abate the off-site hazard; (3) whether that hazard was as open and obvious to the project's tenant as it was to the corporation; and (4) whether any activity or condition on the corporation's property contributed to the accident or enhanced the adjacent danger. The superior court found that the corporation's failure to take protective measures did not cause or enhance the hazard presented by C Street. The court emphasized the corporation's uncontradicted evidence that the existing fence on the north side of the apartments did nothing to obstruct access to the underpass at 19th Avenue and C Street. Noting that the Guerreros had acknowledged that the corporation was obliged to give them access to C Street, the court also found that there appeared to be nothing the corporation could have done to prevent them from end[ing] up on the same public sidewalk faced with the same choice of whether to cross the street at the designated areas or not. The court accordingly ruled that even if the corporation had some off-site duty, the evidence showed that the corporation did not owe the Guerreros the duty at issue  to protect them from the dangers of C Street traffic. We agree. The Guerreros undeniably offered considerable evidence indicating that the corporation knew that children living in the project could easily cross C Street and that crossing the street would be dangerous even for adults. This evidence might reasonably suggest that it was foreseeable that a child from the project might be seriously injured when attempting to cross C Street. But Guerrero cites no cases holding that a landlord's duty to protect tenants from off-premises injury can be triggered by mere awareness of obvious danger and foreseeable harm. To the contrary, as we have seen, the case law illustrates that something more has invariably been required to hold landlords liable for off-site harm. The Guerreros maintain that the unfenced, well-worn path leading toward the intersection of 22nd Avenue and C Street contributed to the danger and established the needed additional factor. But the superior court squarely addressed and rejected this contention. The court noted that the uphill path did not eject tenants into immediate danger; instead, it deposited them on a public sidewalk. There they were protected from traffic by a guardrail that separated the sidewalk from C Street; moreover, the sidewalk and guardrail ran continuously along the west side of the Loussac Manor property, so tenants could readily gain access to the sidewalk from other areas of the project  in fact, the corporation had a duty to make C Street accessible to its tenants. Given these circumstances, the superior court could properly find that the well-worn path did not expose tenants to any increased risk from the dangers of traffic passing by on the far side of the guardrail. Nor does the record reveal any circumstances indicating that the corporation was in a better position than its tenants to know about the open and obvious dangers of C Street traffic, or that it had any special ability or right to control or abate any hazard at the intersection of 22nd Avenue and C Street. Because we see no basis for recognizing an off-site landlord duty in the undisputed circumstances presented here, we affirm the superior court's order granting summary judgment to the corporation.