Opinion ID: 2359642
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Heading: Foreseeability and Related Factors

Text: We examine here the first three related considerations identified in Rowland : the foreseeability of harm to the plaintiff, the degree of certainty that the plaintiff suffered injury, [and] the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered . . . . ( Rowland, supra, 69 Cal.2d at p. 113.) (6) In the generalized sense of foreseeability pertinent to the duty question, that a vehicle parked by the side of a freeway may be struck by another vehicle leaving the freeway, resulting in injury to either vehicle's occupants, is clearly foreseeable. Drivers are supposed to control their vehicles and keep them on the traveled roadway, but common experience shows they do not always do so. Freeway drivers may be intoxicated, distracted, blinded by the weather or sun, sleepy or sick, and for any of these reasons or others may drive off the roadway. Mechanical problems with their vehicles can also force motorists to suddenly leave the freeway. If they do so at freeway speeds and collide with another vehicle parked alongside the road, they are likely to be injured or injure other occupants of the vehicles, or both. This general foreseeability is reflected in the Official Reports, in that numerous decisions have involved collisions between vehicles leaving a highway and vehicles or other obstacles on the roadside. [4] As we observed in Bigbee v. Pacific Tel. & Tel. Co. (1983) 34 Cal.3d 49, 58 [192 Cal.Rptr. 857, 665 P.2d 947] (albeit in discussing an issue of breach, not duty), it is not uncommon for speeding and/or intoxicated drivers to lose control of their cars and crash into poles, buildings or whatever else may be standing alongside the road they travelno matter how straight and level that road may be. Evidence at trial showed that safety standards and guidelines have been formulated with the goal of avoiding collisions between vehicles leaving freeways and trucks or other obstacles alongside the freeway. A highway engineer testified that freeway safety standards disapproved placing any massive obstacle within 30 feet of the traffic lanes. Where feasible, existing obstaclesobjects massive or large enough to cause rapid deceleration or change in direction to a vehicle leaving the freewayare to be removed. Where they cannot be removed, relocated or redesigned to bend or break, they are to be protected with guardrails or similar devices. [5] The Ralphs transportation manager in charge of driver training and discipline testified that when he learned Ralphs drivers were stopping on the freeway side for nonemergency reasons he instructed them not to do so. He regarded such stopping as a danger to the drivers themselves and to other motorists should they leave the roadway. The existence of guidelines seeking to keep the shoulder area free of massive obstacles supports a conclusion the possibility of vehicles leaving the freeway and colliding with obstacles is generally foreseeable. Ralphs cites Whitton v. State of California, supra, 98 Cal.App.3d 235, as holding a collision between a vehicle leaving the freeway and one stopped alongside is not foreseeable absent site-specific circumstances making an accident particularly likely at the location. But Whitton, heard on the plaintiff's appeal of a defense verdict, held only that substantial evidence supported the jury's finding highway patrol officers acted nonnegligently in stopping a speeding motorist and conducting sobriety tests while stopped on the freeway shoulder (where the patrol vehicle was hit by a drunken driver, injuring the motorist who had been pulled over). ( Id. at pp. 242-243.) Whitton, in other words, decided a question of breach, not one of duty. In the course of its discussion, the Whitton court rejected the plaintiff's contention that irrespective of the fact that the jury found on solid and substantial evidence that the officers acted reasonably, there is some sort of absolute liability on the part of the CHP officers ( Whitton v. State of California, supra, 98 Cal.App.3d at p. 242, italics added) because of a possibility a drunken driver would crash into the stopped vehicles, reasoning that such a possibility did not make the officers negligent as a matter of law  or render them  insurers of the motorists' safety from drunken drivers ( ibid., italics added). No such issue of negligence as a matter of law or absolute liability is involved here, of course. Here the jury found defendant's driver did act negligently, and defendant contends it had no duty of care towards plaintiff or her husband. Whitton, as noted, did not question the existence of such a duty of care. Indeed, as we have previously explained, the Whitton court explicitly recognized that the CHP officers, in making the traffic stop, had a duty `to perform their official duties in a reasonable manner' ( Lugtu v. California Highway Patrol, supra, 26 Cal.4th at p. 717, quoting Whitton, at p. 241), but held the evidence at trial sufficient to show they had done so. Ralphs contends CalTrans's prior placement of an Emergency Parking Only sign at the accident site showed it was a safe place to park in an emergency, and hence a safe place to stop, period, making a collision there unforeseeable. Relying on Richards v. Stanley (1954) 43 Cal.2d 60 [271 P.2d 23] and its progeny, Ralphs argues that for an accident to be considered foreseeable there must be evidence of specific circumstances that make an accident in a particular place likely to happen. We disagree. To be sure, the evidence at trial showed Horn stopped his tractor-trailer at a location where the freeway was bordered with a dirt area, and there was no evidence the spot he chose entailed danger beyond the normal risk posed by parking on the shoulder of a freeway. These circumstances probably played a role in the jury's decision to assign Horn and Ralphs only a minimal share of responsibility for the collision, but they do not show lack of foreseeability for the entire category of negligent conduct at issue here. ( Ballard v. Uribe, supra, 41 Cal.3d at p. 573, fn. 6.) As discussed earlier, the foreseeability question for duty purposes is not whether Horn could reasonably have foreseen an accident at that exact spot along the highway, but whether it is generally foreseeable that a vehicle stopped alongside a freeway may be hit by one departing, out of control, from the road. (7) Moreover, that emergency parking was permitted where Horn stopped, and would presumably not have been considered negligent, does not imply a collision at that spot was unforeseeable. The reasonable care required by negligence law depends on all the circumstances, and there are many acts prudent to do under the pressure of exigency that would be negligent but for the emergency. (See, e.g., Lane v. Jaffe (1964) 225 Cal.App.2d 172, 176 [37 Cal.Rptr. 171] [evidence supports finding that a driver who parked his car with a flat tire on a narrow median was not negligent].) The difference between parking a truck alongside the freeway in an emergency and parking in the same location to eat a meal or make a telephone call does not lie in the type or degree of foreseeable risk; in both cases it is foreseeable, in the general sense pertinent to duty, that a vehicle might depart from the freeway and hit the stopped truck. The difference lies instead on the justification side of the negligence balance. As plaintiff observes, in the emergency situation [s]ociety tolerates that risk because allowing drivers to stop in an occasional emergency outweighs the risk. The balance is differentor, at least, juries may find it sowhen the stop is made for discretionary personal purposes. [6] Nor do Richards v. Stanley, supra, 43 Cal.2d 60 ( Richards ), and our subsequent key-in-the-ignition cases stand for the proposition that absent special circumstances a collision between a vehicle parked alongside the freeway and one departing out of control from the freeway is unforeseeable. The Richards line of cases involves significantly different facts. In Richards, the defendant had left her parked car unlocked, with the ignition key in the lock. A thief took the car and, driving carelessly, injured the plaintiff. ( Richards, supra, 43 Cal.2d at pp. 61-62.) Relying on the principle that ordinarily, in the absence of a special relationship between the parties, there is no duty to control the conduct of a third person so as to prevent him from causing harm to another ( id. at p. 65), and the corollary rule that an automobile owner is not ordinarily negligent if he lends his car to another; except in certain special circumstances . . . ( id. at pp. 65-66), we concluded the defendant's duty to exercise reasonable care in the management of her automobile did not encompass a duty to protect plaintiff from the negligent driving of a thief ( id. at p. 66). In later decisions we distinguished Richards, finding special circumstances in the characteristics of the vehicle or piece of equipment, or in the manner or location in which a vehicle was left vulnerable to third party driving, that warranted recognition of a duty. (See, e.g., Ballard v. Uribe, supra, 41 Cal.3d at p. 573; Palma v. U.S. Industrial Fasteners, Inc. (1984) 36 Cal.3d 171, 184-186 [203 Cal.Rptr. 626, 681 P.2d 893]; Richardson v. Ham (1955) 44 Cal.2d 772, 776 [285 P.2d 269].) Richards 's limitation on the duty of a vehicle owner to protect third parties from the unauthorized use of the vehicle by another ( Ballard v. Uribe, supra, 41 Cal.3d at p. 572), a limitation derived from the principle that in the absence of a special relationship there is ordinarily no duty to control the dangerous conduct of another person ( Palma v. U.S. Industrial Fasteners, Inc., supra, 36 Cal.3d at pp. 184-185; Richards, supra, 43 Cal.2d at pp. 65-66), has no application to the type of negligent conduct at issue in this case. That the risk created by a thief's negligent driving was deemed unforeseeable in Richards does not tend to establish that the risk created by Horn's own negligence in stopping, with inadequate justification, by the side of a freeway should also be deemed unforeseeable. (See Jackson v. Ryder Truck Rental, Inc., supra, 16 Cal.App.4th at pp. 1843-1844 [distinguishing Richards, where the defendant's own negligence led to the plaintiff being stopped by the side of the freeway, creating a risk of collision with vehicles leaving the roadway].) Richards reasoned in part that the defendant, by leaving her car unlocked and unguarded, did not increase the risk of an accident over the risk that would have existed had she intentionally entrusted her car to another. ( Richards, supra, 43 Cal.2d at p. 66.) [7] But parking a tractor-trailer rig alongside the freeway in what CalTrans calls the recovery zone (CalTrans, Traffic Manual, supra, ch. 7, Traffic Safety Systems, § 7-02.1, p. 7-2), as Horn did, does increase the risk of a collision over the risk existing when no obstacle is present. Richards, which concerned conduct that merely allowed a third party to take a vehicle and injure the plaintiff, does not stand for the proposition that special circumstances should be required for the instant, very different category of negligent conduct. (8) As the above discussion suggests, the question of the closeness of the connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered ( Rowland, supra, 69 Cal.2d at p. 113) is strongly related to the question of foreseeability itself. Richards 's holding could fairly be characterized as resting on a too attenuated connection between the defendant's negligent conduct, leaving the car unlocked, with the ignition key available, and the plaintiff's injury in a collision caused by a negligently driving thief. (See Bryant v. Glastetter, supra, 32 Cal.App.4th at pp. 781, 782, fn. 2 [noting relationship between foreseeability and closeness-of-connection factors]; Jackson v. Ryder Truck Rental, Inc., supra, 16 Cal.App.4th at p. 1844 [relating foreseeability and closeness-of-connection considerations in discussion of Richards ].) Generally speaking, where the injury suffered is connected only distantly and indirectly to the defendant's negligent act, the risk of that type of injury from the category of negligent conduct at issue is likely to be deemed unforeseeable. Conversely, a closely connected type of injury is likely to be deemed foreseeable. Bryant v. Glastetter, supra, 32 Cal.App.4th 770, which Ralphs cites on the foreseeability factor, is best understood as resting on a lack of close connection between the defendant's conduct and the injury suffered. In Bryant, a tow truck driver working to remove a vehicle from the shoulder of a freeway was fatally struck by a passing vehicle. His surviving wife and children sued the original driver of the vehicle he was removing, who had earlier been pulled over and arrested for drunken driving at that location. ( Id. at pp. 774-775.) The appellate court held the defendant (the drunken driver) owed no duty to the decedent to prevent the injury he suffered. The defendant owed decedent, like anyone else potentially injured by her driving while intoxicated, a duty to refrain from doing so ( id. at p. 779), but the connection between her negligence and the type of injury that resultedan errant vehicle striking the tow truck driver called to remove her car from the freewaywas too indirect and attenuated, for there is no logical cause and effect relationship between that negligence and the harm suffered by decedent except for the fact that it placed decedent in a position to be acted upon by the negligent third party. ( Id. at p. 782.) [8] Resting as it does on the indirectness of the connection between the defendant's drunken driving and the injury to the plaintiff, Bryant does not assist Ralphs's argument. Unlike the situations in Bryant and Richards no third party negligence intervened between the Ralphs driver's negligent conduct and Adelelmo Cabral's injury. Ralphs did not merely place[] decedent in a position to be acted upon by [a] negligent third party. ( Bryant v. Glastetter, supra, 32 Cal.App.4th at p. 782). Rather, the conduct of the Ralphs driver that the jury found negligent, stopping his tractor-trailer alongside an interstate highway for a nonemergency reason, placed by the roadway a massive, if temporary, obstacle not previously there. It thus directly created the risk of a collision for any vehicle leaving the freeway at that point, the same risk that eventuated and resulted in Cabral's death. Cabral's own negligence was, of course, also found to be a cause of the accident, for which the jury assigned him 90 percent of the comparative fault. Ralphs, however, disavows any argument that Cabral's negligent driving was a superseding cause cutting off the company's own liability, an argument that, in any event, would appear precluded by our reasoning and conclusion in Lugtu v. California Highway Patrol, supra, 26 Cal.4th at pages 725-726. We held there that the negligence of a driver whose vehicle veered into the median and hit a vehicle negligently pulled over there by the highway patrol was not a superseding cause of the stopped driver's and passengers' injuries: The risk of harm posed by the negligence of an oncoming driver is one of the foremost risks against which [the highway patrol officer's] duty of care was intended to protect. ( Ibid. ) Any comparison of the two negligent acts, the officer's and the vehicle driver's, was to be done by the jury in apportioning fault, not by the court as a matter of law. ( Id. at p. 726.) To the extent Horn acted negligently in stopping alongside the freeway, as the jury found he did, it is because he unreasonably created a risk of precisely the type of event that occurred; the connection between negligent conduct and injury is thus sufficiently close. In urging us to hold it owed Cabral no duty because he was injured only as a result of his own negligence, Ralphs asks us to do under the duty rubric what we would not do in the name of causation in Lugtu, an invitation we should again decline. The general foreseeability of a collision between a vehicle leaving the freeway and one stopped alongside the road, and the relatively direct and close connection between negligent stopping and such a collision, weigh against creating a categorical exception to the duty of ordinary care. [9]