Opinion ID: 1038647
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 2

Heading: Adams

Text: Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th 243, involved a person who was suicidal. Patrick Adams, who lived in Fremont in Alameda County, suffered from periodic bouts of depression and became belligerent when he drank hard liquor. (Id. at p. 249.) One evening, Patrick lost his temper and pushed his wife to the floor. (Ibid.) The wife telephoned her daughter, who came to the house. When the daughter heard Patrick discharge a firearm, she went to a neighbor‟s house and telephoned the police. (Id. at p. 250.) Several officers, with weapons drawn, entered the Adams home. They later discovered Patrick crouched in the bushes in the backyard. Patrick was aiming a gun at his own chest. He refused to put down the gun and told the officers to leave him alone. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at pp. 251-253.) The officers sought cover. Several officers aimed guns at Patrick, and two officers approached Patrick with a barking police dog. (Id. at pp. 252-253.) When one of the officers, a trained negotiator, began talking to Patrick, he told her to leave and became angry. (Id. at pp. 253-254.) The officers then heard Patrick discharge his gun. Believing that Patrick had fired at them, several police officers fired back. As it turned out, Patrick had shot at himself, not at the officers. Although Patrick‟s body had a number of bullet wounds, it was a single self-inflicted wound, which had penetrated the heart and liver, that was fatal. The self-inflicted wound was from 11 the initial shot, fired by Patrick, that led the police to return fire. (Id. at p. 262, fn. 16.) Patrick‟s wife and daughter sued the City of Fremont and various police officers, alleging negligence, wrongful death, and certain intentional torts. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at p. 249.) The jury awarded damages to the plaintiffs. (Id. at pp. 259-260.) Answers to special interrogatories indicated that the jury based its finding of police negligence on the events leading up to the shooting, not on the actual shooting itself. (Id. at p. 260.) A divided panel of the California Court of Appeal reversed the judgment for the plaintiffs in Adams. On the issue of negligence, the court concluded that the police officers owed the plaintiffs no duty of care with respect to their preshooting efforts to resolve the situation. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at p. 276.) In reaching that conclusion, the court applied the test set forth in Rowland, supra, 69 Cal.2d 108, in which we discussed exceptions “to the general principle that a person is liable for injuries caused by his failure to exercise reasonable care in the circumstances.” (Id. at p. 112.) We said: “A departure from this fundamental principle involves the balancing of a number of considerations” including “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, 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. [Citations.]” (Id. at pp. 112-113.) On foreseeability, the California Court of Appeal in Adams acknowledged that Patrick‟s death was a foreseeable outcome of the officers‟ preshooting conduct, adding that in the “highly charged, volatile situation . . . almost any result 12 was foreseeable with the benefit of hindsight.” (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at p. 269.) The court also noted that the link between the police officers‟ preshooting conduct and Patrick‟s decision to end his life by shooting himself in the heart was “indirect and inferential.” (Ibid.) On moral blame, Adams concluded there was none associated with the officers‟ preshooting conduct. No evidence existed that the officers planned to precipitate Patrick‟s suicide, knew it would ensue, or acted with bad faith or reckless indifference. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at pp. 270-271.) On the policy of preventing future harm, the burden on law enforcement personnel, and the consequences to the community, Adams said that in a suicide situation, peace officers are appropriately concerned primarily with the public‟s safety and their own safety, and secondarily with the safety of the person threatening suicide. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at p. 272.) A balancing of the various considerations, Adams concluded, militated against imposing a legal duty on peace officers to prevent a threatened suicide from being carried out. (Adams, supra, 68 Cal.App.4th at p. 276.) Citing our decision in Parsons v. Crown Disposal Co. (1997) 15 Cal.4th 456, which applied the Rowland test but also deemed relevant “the social value” of the specific goal, if any, that the defendant was seeking to advance (Parsons, at p. 473, citing Rowland, supra, 69 Cal.2d at pp. 112-113), Adams noted the “extremely high” social value of protecting the lives of peace officers involved in a standoff with an armed individual. (Adams, supra, at p. 276.) Having concluded that the defendants had no duty to prevent Patrick‟s suicide, Adams then reversed the judgment in the plaintiffs‟ favor. 13